Dry Land
by Caskett54
Summary: When, after another brush with death, Kate still refuses to stop investigating her mother's murder, Castle leaves - for three years. This is the story of Kate Beckett's quest to earn his forgiveness and recapture his heart. Romance/Angst/Crime.
1. The Lucky One

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **

**This story takes place during Always – after they find out about the connection to Kate's mother's murder and to her shooting but before Castle comes to her apartment to tell her to stop. I guess it's sort of a different way the events of Always could've played out, if our team and the people behind Beckett's mother's murder had made some different decisions. I know that not even Andrew Marlowe would be cruel enough to do this to us (THANK GOD), but it's fun to write, and I really hope you guys like it.**

-0-0-0-

_Marks of battle, they still feel raw, a million pieces of me on the floor_

_-Exit Wounds, The Script_

__-0-0-0-

It doesn't hurt as much as you would think.

She should be in agonizing pain. She knows that. But as the man in the cliché black ski mask pulls the short blade from her back, all she can feel is numb shock as the words _'I've been stabbed' _play over and over again in her mind. She almost wants to laugh – it seems ridiculous. If she had been stabbed, she would be in pain. And the pain is there; as she tumbles towards the ground, she can feel a mild stinging in her lower back. But it's like she cut herself on a rock. Nothing to worry about.

But the look on Castle's face tells a very different story.

Something to worry about, it says. Something to lie awake at night, staring blankly at the ceiling over. Something to make yourself sick over.

"Kate!" he yells, but it sounds like he's a million miles away instead of right there, kneeling on the sidewalk next to her, his hand finding her neck and cupping it, supporting her head. Just as it did nearly a year ago now. Just as it did during those awful minute in the cemetery when she lay on the ground with a bullet in her chest, in so much more pain than she was in right now.

Just as it did in those minutes she still hasn't told him she remembers.

He's thinking about those minutes, too; she can tell because as he brushes strand of hair out of her face with his free hand, as his sweet blue eyes flicker between her hazel ones and the growing pool of dark red blood on the pavement, as he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out his phone, as he stabs at the numbers 9, 1, and 1 with his thumb, he's muttering to himself – to her? – under his breath. "Not again," he's saying. "Please, not again."

He's pressing the phone to his ear with the hand that isn't underneath her neck. By this time, he's stopped looking at the pool of blood – because he's decided that it's not important, or because it's too much for him to look at without breaking down? Whatever the reason, his eyes are now fixed on hers, drinking her in because he knows now might be his last chance.

It's funny. Castle's voice is muffled when he speaks, like he's miles and miles and miles away. But she can still hear the tinny female voice on the other end of the line.

"911, what's your emergency?"

"I need an ambulance," Castle barks into the phone. "A woman's been stabbed." He rattles off the name of the street they're on and then hangs up. As he puts the phone back in his pocket, as his eyes search hers, she knows why. He doesn't want to be distracted. In these precious seconds, he does not want to focus on anything but her. Because he knows these precious seconds may be her last.

She's worried now. It still doesn't hurt, but she can see the fear on Castle's face and it's making her afraid, too. Between the fear and the pain and the despair and the desperation, he looks just as he did a year ago in the cemetery.

If he's that scared, she must be dying.

It's strange. She thought she knew what dying felt like. She thought it was a blur of extreme, mind-boggling pain, dark oblivion, and incomparable confusion, punctuated by bursts of sound and flashes of light, glimpses of the world beyond trying to pull her onward and the world she knew trying to pull her back. Death was a game of tug-of-war, she thought, played by two very determined parties, with the rope stretched over a bottomless chasm and Kate holding onto it for dear life – literally. Both teams fought their hardest; both wanted her for their very own. But in the end, she was the real star of the show. She could choose to hold onto the rope as friends and doctors fought to save her life. But if she chose to let go, if she chose to drop into that bottomless pit, it did not matter which side was fated to win, which team destiny was backing. If she chose to let herself fall, Death won by default.

This is nothing like that.

This is more like falling asleep after a long and tiring day. It's satisfying, relaxing, desirable. It's peaceful.

She wants to sleep now. Her eyelids are drooping, tugged downward by an invisible hand. But Castle's there, keeping her awake. He's stopped saying "Not again." He's saying the same sort of things he said to her in the cemetery. "Stay with me," is repeated over and over again. He wants her to stay with him. He wants her to stay awake for him. He doesn't want her to leave.

She can't help but wonder if he'll tell her he loves her again.

"Please, Kate," he whispers, caressing her cheek with the back of his hand. "Stay with me. You have to stay with me. The ambulance is coming. You're going to be alright. You just have to stay with me long enough for them to get here, okay? Can you do that for me?"

She tries to tell him that yes, of course – for him, she'll stay awake. For him, she'll do most anything. But she's gone temporarily mute and she can't make a sound. And then her eyelids are sliding down again of their own accord, and she tries to say no, she doesn't want this, she wants to stay awake for Castle, but she's no longer in control. But he's there, shaking her shoulder – gently, so gently, like she's made of china and he's afraid she'll break at the slightest touch. "Kate," he's saying, and there's panic in his voice. "Kate, come on, stay with me. Please don't leave me."

She won't leave him. She'll never leave him. She might as well saw off one of her own limbs. Or shoot herself in the heart.

"Please, Katie," he pleads. "Please."

Katie. He's never called her Katie before. She's always been Beckett, Kate in situations like these. Katie is a new one. If she had any control over her body, she would scold him for using the nickname reserved solely for her father.

"Katie, please!" He's desperate now, so desperate, and she thinks maybe he made the mistake of looking down at the pool of blood again. "Dammit, Kate, you have to stay with me!"

His hand is around hers now, and he's clutching it like a lifeline, as though he were the one dying instead of her. And even with her blurred, darkened vision she can see the look in his eyes, and she knows that's what he wants. If he could somehow make a deal to switch their places, he would. He would take a bullet for her. He would've taken this knife for her.

He loves her.

And it's so tangible, so obvious, so strong that she can practically see it radiating off of him. Submersed in the ocean of his passion, she can barely breathe; she's being smothered by the anguish of it, but it's his pain, not hers. On some cosmic level they are connected in a way that others would call impossible, but only because they do not understand – they have never cared for someone so deeply as to share this sort of bond. And it's a beautiful thing, but in moments like this it's horrible, because to say she knows how he feels would be a tragic understatement. She feels how he feels. She can see the pain in his eyes and she knows that if the roles were reversed, if it were him lying on the ground and not her, she would wish for nothing more than to switch back. She would want nothing but to take his place, because the pain of taking a knife to the back is far less than the pain of watching him take it.

Most normal people would think her crazy, but she knows better. She knows that on this day, she is the lucky one. She's bleeding to death on a sidewalk, and he's kneeling above her, completely unharmed, but between the two of them, she is the lucky one.

She can hear the sirens of the ambulance in the distance; Castle hears them, too, because he looks up, hope on his face, before turning his eyes back to her face.

"They're coming, Kate," he tells her. "They can save you. You just have to hold on until they get here. Just hold on."

She can hold on. For the man who loves her, she can hold on.

But she has no control.

She's fighting like she's never fought before but she has no control. She's falling towards blackness, and she can see Castle above her reaching out to catch her, but she can't even reach for his hand. She has no control.

She's not strong enough; her eyes are closing. She's dying.

"Just hold on, Kate."

She'll do her best.


	2. Tethered

_If I only could, make a deal with God, get him to swap our places_

_-Running Up That Hill, Placebo_

-0-0-0-

He wants to stay with her.

He doesn't want to leave her side.

But they're taking her into surgery and he can't come.

They promise him she'll be alright, but he doesn't know if he believes them. He doesn't know if he trusts them with her life.

And it's too much like her shooting. As they wheel her away on a stretcher and he stands alone in the hallway, it's far too much like her shooting.

_Please don't let it be exactly like her shooting._

He can't take it if she leaves again.

"Castle!"

He turns around at the sound of his name – Ryan and Esposito are running down the corridor towards him. Ryan's expression screams of panic and anxiety; Esposito's is colder, angry and determined.

In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he'd called them. He'd called everyone. Jim Beckett first, then his mother, then Esposito and Ryan, then Lanie. With Martha and Lanie, he had to leave a message. It's after eleven PM now, so he isn't surprised that the boys arrived first.

"What happened?" Esposito demands, coming to a stop in front of Castle; his partner is just a few steps behind him.

"We were in front of Montgomery's house." He isn't sure where he gets the strength to recount the awful tale. "In case someone decided to come back. Kate thought she saw something, so we got out of the car, but there was nothing there. She figured she'd imagined it, and we were going to get back in the car, and then… he showed up. Just appeared out of nowhere behind her. And… he stabbed her in the back and ran away."

-0-0-0-

_He doesn't care about the man in the black ski mask fleeing the scene. Let him run. Let him run from the atrocities he's committed for the rest of his life and then let him burn in hell for eternity. He doesn't care._

_All he cares about his her. _

_She's dropping to her knees, toppling sideways, plummeting towards the sidewalk. Crumpling. And he's yelling her name, her first name, as though he thinks that with that single syllable he can somehow call her back from the precipice of death she's suddenly dangling from the edge of. But no, he knows better. He must know better, because he's dropping to the ground next to her, his hand finding the back of her neck and supporting her head. He's thinking he has to hold onto her, no matter what, because maybe if he can't talk her back from the cliff, he can pull her back. _

"_Not again," he mutters as he pushes a few strands of beautiful golden-brown hair out of her face. It's the shooting all over again, and he couldn't save her. Why can he never save her? "Please, not again." He glances down to the blood that's pooling around her, forming a dark red circle around her midsection, a dark red circle with its center at that point at her back where the masked figure pushed a blade inside her, a dark red circle with Kate's body drawing a line through the middle. He doesn't want to look at it; it's too awful, too horrid. He'd rather look at her, feasting on the beauty of her face and drinking in the sadness in her eyes. But he can't keep his eyes off of it. It's the same feeling he has on the days when she's late, when he sits in the precinct with two cups of coffee quickly losing heat, when he can't stop glancing at his watch and wondering when she'll join him. But on those days, she always walks in the door eventually. She always greets him with a casual "Hey, Castle," as she picks up her coffee and takes a seat at her desk, seemingly oblivious to the great relief she's sent washing over him. But this is different. The pool of blood is a clock that counts down the seconds of her life, not the seconds of the day. And she will not walk in the door to take her coffee and stop his endless glancing at the clock. There will be no relief._

_An ambulance. He needs to call an ambulance. He grabs his phone from his pocket, doesn't bother to unlock it – he goes straight to the emergency call and punches the numbers 9-1-1 with his thumb. He forces himself not to look at the blood, and instead stares down into her face as he presses the phone to his ear. She's staring up at him, too, fear swimming in her lovely green irises. _

_In their eyes are all the words they never got the chance to say._

"_911, what's your emergency?" The female voice is pleasant. Too pleasant._

"_I need an ambulance," he practically yells into the phone. "A woman's been stabbed." He doesn't like calling her 'a woman'. She isn't just a woman. She's the woman, Kate Beckett, strong and smart and fierce and independent and so very, very brave. Too brave. _

_He tells the 911 woman where to find them and hangs up the phone. Two things to focus on is one too many when one of them is Kate bleeding out on the sidewalk. He doesn't want to think about anything but her right now, because even her alone is just a little bit too much for him to handle. He can't be distracted. He has to focus on her, hold onto her, stay with her so she'll stay with him._

_They will stay there, on the sidewalk, together, until the ambulance comes. He will keep her awake and she will keep him alive. They can do this. They can get through this together, as partners, or maybe as something more. She will survive. _

_He's just starting to relax a little when her eyes begin to close._

"_No – Kate!" But she's not listening. She can't hear him, not where she is. "Stay with me, Kate!" She has to stay awake. She has to. And she can – he knows she can. She's fighting to keep her eyes open, struggling to overcome the darkness, but she's won battles harder than this. She will keep fighting until she wins, and he will stay there with her to remind her of what she's fighting for. _

"_Please, Kate." His voice is a whisper, light as the wind, but as he gently caresses her soft cheek with the back of his hand, he knows she can hear him. "Stay with me. You have to stay with me. The ambulance is coming. You're going to be alright. You just have to stay with me long enough for them to get here, okay? Can you do that for me?"_

_That's what he says._

_Please say you can do that for me, is what he doesn't say. Please say you can do that, because if you can't, I don't know what I'll do. Please say you can do that, because if you can't, I'll fall apart. Because if you die, I'll die with you._

_But she doesn't say anything._

_And her eyes start to close again._

_And he's torn, because he knows he can't let her fall asleep, can't let her die, can't let her go. But he doesn't know how to keep her awake because it's physically impossible for him to raise his voice above a whisper and he doesn't want to shake her because he's afraid she might break. He can't let her go, but if he holds her too tight, moves her too suddenly, she'll shatter like glass._

_But he has to keep her awake. So he grasps her shoulder in his free hand and shakes, so slightly, so gently. "Kate," he says insistently; he can hear the edge of panic in his voice. "Kate, come on, stay with me. Please don't leave me."_

_He couldn't protect her._

_Why couldn't he protect her?_

_What good is he if he can't protect the people he loves when it matters the most?_

_And he's begging, begging her to stay, begging her not to leave and send him spiraling into a dark depression that will swallow him whole. "Please, Katie," he says. "Please."_

_He knows she wouldn't like him calling her Katie. But he doesn't know what else to do. _

_At last, he caves._

_He looks down at the pool of blood._

_And almost faints._

_It's big, far too big. It's not a circle anymore; the deadly red liquid is branching out in every which way, seeking out low points in the sidewalk and racing towards them. It's soaking the white fabric of her shirt, climbing up her sides and edging onto her stomach. It's reached him, seeped into the knees of his pants, and he hadn't even noticed. God, he hadn't even noticed how close to death she must be._

"_Katie, please!"_

_He doesn't really know what he's doing or why he's doing it, but he grabs her hand and holds it tight. He can't bring himself to let go. He doesn't think he'll ever be able to let go. Because, ironically, despite the fact that she's the one on the ground dying and he's the one who's suffered no damage worse than bloodstained pants, her hand in his is the only thing tethering him to this world._

_The only thing tethering him to life._

_She looks so small, so helpless, and in this moment, he can't think of anything he wouldn't give up just to save her life. It reminds him of a lyric, the first line of the chorus of a song he heard once, the soundtrack to a death scene on one of his favorite television shows._

_**If I only could make a deal with God, get him to swap our places**_

_If he only could… if he only could, he knows he would. He would give anything to switch with her, to be the one dying instead of her. He hates himself for it. He knows the pain of watching the life drain out of a loved one, having experienced it twice now, and he hates himself for wishing that pain on Kate. All the same, he cannot help it – he desires nothing more than to take her place._

_God, he loves her so much._

_His thoughts are invaded by a sound he's always considered irritating. Now, he can't think of a more beautiful noise in the world._

_Sirens. _

_The ambulance._

"_They're coming, Kate," he assures her. "They can save you. You just have to hold on until they get here. Just hold on."_

_Please hold on._

_She's trying, he can tell. But she's fighting a losing battle and her strength is slipping away from her with each passing moment. And he wishes with all his heart that he could give her all of his, let his life leave his body in the hopes that the strength she unwittingly steals from him will be enough to keep her safe. Enough to keep her alive. If he knew a way, he'd do it. But he doesn't._

_Her eyes are closing. Closing, closing, closing… closed. He couldn't save her._

"_Just hold on, Kate."_

_Please just hold on._

-0-0-0-

"Where is she now?"

"She's in surgery." Castle sinks into a chair, his hands over his face, desolation pressing in on him from all sides. This is his fault. His fault. He was supposed to keep her away from her mother's case. He was supposed to keep her safe.

But when it mattered most, he did nothing.

If she dies, it's his fault. Her blood is on his hands, her death on his conscience. Without her he is lost in a sea of guilt and misery and crushing loneliness. Without her he is nothing. Without her he would not – could not – ever be the same.

"She'll pull through," Esposito offers. "She's tough."

"I know she is."

"She's survived worse than this."

"That's just it." He forces himself to look up, to meet Esposito's eyes. "What if this is it? What if she's cheated death one too many times?"

None of them seemed to have an answer for that.


	3. Two Hours Dead

_All of your thoughts, and, I don't know if I'm strong enough now_

_-Catalyst, Anna Nalick_

-0-0-0-

Jim Beckett arrives around 11:30.

Castle was terrified to face him. What do you say to a father whose only daughter is in a hospital bed fighting for her life for the second time in a year because you didn't do anything to stop it? But he seems to understand. He doesn't blame him.

It's awful how sincerely he does not blame him. Castle almost wants to grab him and shake him and demand to know how it is that he does not blame him, how it is possible, after all that he's done, that he does not hate him. But he will not. Because the last time they were here, when Kate had a bullet so close to her heart, he fought with Josh. He will not fight with Jim.

Ryan and Esposito seem to understand Castle's desire not to tell the story again, so they tell Jim what happened. Castle sits in a chair, his head in his hands, trying not to listen. Trying not to think about what's just happened. What he's just witnessed.

But eventually Jim walks over and sits down beside him. "Is there anything they're not telling me?" he asks.

"I don't know," Castle replies honestly without looking up. "Wasn't listening."

He's surprised to hear Jim chuckle softly. They're both silent for a few minutes before he asks, "Did you see it coming?"

"No," he tells him. "The guy appeared out of nowhere. I barely had time to notice him before he…" He trails off. He doesn't want to say it.

Jim nods. They spend another few minutes in silence before he says, "You can't blame yourself, you know."

"The hell I can't."

"Really, Castle." He's not screwing with him. He honestly doesn't blame him at all. "You said it yourself – you had no time. There was nothing you could have done."

There were so many things he could have done. So many ways he could have protected her. But he didn't. Nothing Jim can say will ever change that. So he simply grunts, a small, neutral noise that could be taken as disbelief, indifference, or agreement.

"Trust me," Jim insists. "It's survivor's guilt."

"She's not dead." _Please say she's not dead._

"Same principles apply," he says. "I would know, right?"

He would know. He who lost his wife too soon. But he was not there when it happened. He was not around to watch the life leave her eyes.

He certainly was not around to watch the life leave her eyes twice.

Jim stands, pats Castle on the shoulder – a gesture that's somewhere between fatherly, brotherly, and that of the bond of two people, more like business partners than friends, who came together in a time of mutual need. "Don't beat yourself up over something you can't control," he tells him, before walking away to join Ryan and Esposito.

If only he knew.

Martha and Alexis show up just after midnight, apologizing endlessly for not arriving sooner. Apparently, Martha had been watching television when Castle called, and it wasn't until she was about to go up to bed that she realized that there was a missed call on the home phone. Martha is still dressed in the clothes of the day – a knee-length black skirt and soft turquoise turtleneck – but Alexis wears silky pink pajamas, which look rather odd with black denim flats. Between that and the state of her hair, it's clear she's been woken up and dragged out of bed to come here, but her expression is as alert as can be.

He stands when he sees them. Martha slows to talk to Esposito and Ryan, but Alexis's pace quickens. "Dad," she murmurs, enveloping him in a warm hug that smells of her flowery shower gel. Her cheek is pressed against his chest; he lifts his arms and wraps them around her, allowing one hand to rest against the back of her head, fingers tangled in her soft orange hair. They stay like that for a while. Neither can think of a legitimate reason to let the other go, not when the warmth of this embrace is sweeter than anything either has felt in what seems like forever.

At 12:30, a small brunette nurse brings them pillows and blankets. She tells them that Kate is still in surgery, and that it's too early to make any predictions. She says it nicely, but Castle knows what she means.

They desperately want to tell them that everything is alright, that they know Kate is going to make it, that they're sure she'll be just fine.

But that would be a lie.

She leaves them with carefully phrased empty promises and a pile of pillows and blankets. Only Alexis sleeps.

Lanie doesn't arrive until a little after six AM the next morning. She looks more frazzled than Castle has ever seen her; she obviously left the house in a hurry. She's clearly thrown on the first clothes that met her fingers when she opened the drawer – black sweatpants and a dark blue tank top with a rounded V neck – and she hasn't bothered to brush her hair or put on makeup.

"I came as soon as I heard," she insists, as though she feels the need to justify herself. "Where is she? What's happening? Is she going to be alright?"

"We don't know," Ryan answers truthfully.

"Last thing we heard was a bunch of 'too-soon-to-tell' bull," Esposito supplements. "We've all just been crossing our fingers all night."

Lanie's shoulders slump; her head hangs; all of the life seems to leave her body. Castle has only seen her so weak once before, a year ago in this very same hospital. But this is different. This grief and anguish is punctuated by guilt. The guilt that Castle and Ryan and Esposito and Jim and Martha and Alexis stayed here all night, waiting on the edges of their seats for the news they were all hoping for, or for the news they were all dreading, that the unthinkable had occurred – that Kate had finally found a battle she could not win. The guilt that while they were all here, awake – for the most part – she was lying peacefully in her own bed, wholly unburdened by the knowledge that her best friend was fighting for her life once again. The guilt that when Kate needed her, she was not there. It's the sort of shame that looks like it might swallow her up; she seems so helpless, so hopeless, so very much not Lanie, and when Esposito walks over to her and puts an arm around her shoulder, she does not push him away. She goes so far as to rest her head against his chest and allow him to gently run his fingers through her hair.

By this time, Alexis is awake, sipping a coffee while huddled in a chair, most of her body coved by one of the fuzzy blue blankets the brunette nurse brought. Martha sits behind her, murmuring words of reassurance and kindness. Castle has already called Alexis's school to let them know that she will be absent – they didn't like it, not on the day before she gives her valedictorian speech, but who were they to argue? – and Martha has cancelled all of her classes for the day. Both women have cleared their schedules, put aside the trivial happenings of their everyday lives to sit in this hospital waiting room – for him or for Kate, he does not know. He doesn't mind, not really. The presence of his flamboyant mother and sweet teenage daughter is comforting, and honestly, he can use all the comfort he could get.

Five minutes pass. Lanie collapses into a chair and tucks a pillow behind her neck, leaning back on it and staring up at the ceiling. If her excessive blinking and frequent swallowing are any indication, she is on the verge of tears. Esposito takes the seat next to her and reaches for her hand where it lies on the armrest. She does not fight him as he takes it; their arms twist together, so his is closer to her and hers closer to him; their fingers are interlocked, fingertips dancing gently on the back of the other's hand; his thumb brushes gently against her palm.

Ten minutes. The brunette nurse is back, eagerly providing directions to the hospital cafeteria. All anyone wants to hear about is Kate, but as soon as Esposito, Ryan, Jim, and Martha begin bombarding her with questions ("How is she?" "Is she out of surgery yet?" "Will she be okay?" "When can she come home?"), she pales and scurries away.

Thirty minutes. Ryan's cell phone rings – it's Gates, probably wondering where the hell they are and what new leads they've found. No one's told her yet. He hangs up on her, begins composing a very carefully thought out text message explaining exactly what happened. He considers every word, and it takes him about five drafts and a full half an hour before he sends it.

An hour. Ryan anxiously awaits Gate's reply. Lanie has – reluctantly, it seems – pulled her hand from Esposito's and is pacing the floor a few feet away. Alexis is on her third cup of coffee. Castle and Jim Beckett have assumed similar positions – their heads down, their hands clasped together in their laps, their feet crossed at the ankles.

An hour and fifteen minutes. Gates calls again, and this time, Ryan answers. She isn't angry; Castle can tell because when she is, she's loud, and he can't hear her. But by the time Ryan hangs up, he's been convinced that the best thing he can do to help Kate is try to track down the man who stabbed her. And to do that, he needs to get back to the case they're all working. And so Esposito and Ryan leave the group, headed for the precinct.

An hour and a half. Martha takes Alexis down to the cafeteria to get breakfast. Lanie has returned to her seat and Jim has taken her place pacing, like the two of them together are on a mission to wear a hole in the tiled hallway floor and they're taking turns working at it.

An hour and forty-five minutes. Josh walks through the hallway. He does not acknowledge Castle, but the writer can practically see his brain working to process what the group of Richard Castle and his family, Lanie Parish, and Jim Beckett – _Jim Beckett – _might all be doing together in the hospital. The gears in his head are spinning and when he's a few yards away from them he turns around, an expression of concern on his face because he thinks he's figured it out. Because he doesn't know. Because no one told him. And because Ryan and Esposito are gone, because Josh does not know Martha or Alexis, because a father should not have to tell the tale of his daughter being stabbed, because Castle looks far too sad and silent that it seems it would be a crime to force him to say a word (and because for obvious reasons the two have never seen eye to eye), the task of explaining falls to the loyal best friend who was not there. Lanie stands and approaches Josh, walks past him, gestures for him to follow. She waits until they are out of earshot to begin explaining, but Castle can still see the expression on Josh's face morphing as the story is told – from worry to angry disbelief (my ex-girlfriend was stabbed and no one bothered to tell me?) to something very close to panic. And then he goes running back the way he came.

Two hours. Two lonely, miserable hours of his life. Two hours dead in this horrible place. Two hours lost, consumed by some dark void. Two hours that, if he had made different choices, played his cards better, done as he was supposed to, he could have spent with Kate.

_She'll pull through, _he told himself. _She has to pull through. She has to make it. _

_I'll forgive her._

_If she makes it – she _will_ make it – I'll forgive her._

_It doesn't matter that she lied to me._

_It doesn't matter that she doesn't feel the same way I do._

_God dammit, if she makes it, I'll forgive her for everything._

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**Yes, I'm an Esplanie shipper. What? There's nothing wrong with shipping two different pairings for the same TV show. Especially not a canon pairing (with a canon ship name) like Esplanie.**

**At any rate, keep an eye out for the next chapter, and be sure to tap the little blue clickity-click Review button and tell me what you think. I love constructive criticism, and some pointers on how to make the story better would be much appreciated. **

**Peace. –Caskett54**


	4. Asking For You

_And you'd be inclined to be mine for the taking, and part of this terrible mess that I'm making, but you, you're the catalyst_

_-Catalyst, Anna Nalick_

-0-0-0-

"Mr. Beckett?"

Castle and Jim move in sync. They lift their heads, taking in the sight of the doctor – an attractive Asian woman who rather reminds Castle of Cristina Yang from Grey's Anatomy, though according to the stitching on her coat, she is Allyson Lam – standing before them; they uncross their ankles and untangle their fingers; and they stand. Confused for an instant, Allyson Lam's gaze flickers between the two men. Jim, her father, obviously. Castle… her husband? No ring… simply a concerned friend? No, the fear on his face is too intense. She stands there, not sure who to address, until Jim speaks up.

"How is she?"

"Your daughter is out of surgery," she says, looking relieved to be back on terrain she knows.

"Will she be alright?"

"She's fine, Mr. Beckett," Dr. Lam replies confidently. "Some rest, a bit of physical therapy, she'll be back on her feet in no time at all."

She's fine.

She's fine.

_She's fine. _

No 'but'. No catch. Just fine. She's fine.

He could laugh.

Or cry.

He isn't sure which would happen first.

"When can I see her?"

Is that his voice? No. No, it's Jim's, asking the exact question running through Castle's head.

"She's unconscious at the moment," Dr. Lam is saying. "But as soon as we get her settled, we'll bring you in to her." Her eyes scan the crowd; Castle standing, Alexis and Martha huddled together, Lanie with her phone pressed to her ear, bouncing up and down impatiently as she waits for someone – probably Ryan or Esposito – to pick up. "The same goes for any other family."

He is not family.

Why is he not family?

He should be family.

"When can her friends see her?" That's Lanie. Apparently no one's picked up the phone yet, so she's speaking up from where she stands while she waits.

"We'll call you," Dr. Lam replies. "In the meantime, feel free to head home. Get some rest, or – or do whatever it is you should – you normally – you ought to –" Sighing, she gives up, tries for a smile, and turns and heads back the way she came. She's probably a very good doctor, Allyson Lam, but her people skills seem to be severely limited.

He can't help but wonder, if things had gone differently… if Kate had not… would they have sent someone else? Someone capable of delivering the news more softly, more gently, more kindly than Allyson Lam could have?

Alexis and Martha head home to get some sleep. Lanie and Castle stay behind. After perhaps ten minutes, Jim is called in to see Kate; Lanie continues to call whoever it is she's calling for nearly twenty more until they finally pick up.

"Hey, it's Lanie… Yeah, we're still at the hospital. Look, I wanted to… Javi, for Christ's sake, slow down! No, it's nothing like that. She's fine. Yes, I said she's fine. Jim's in there with her right now… No, she's asleep right now, and the doctor said only family. They're going to call when she's ready for visitors… Have you found anything new? …Oh. Okay… Yeah, that's fine. I should probably get back, too…"

There's a long pause, and it's not because Javier Esposito is talking the entire time. Throughout the conversation, Castle's been able to hear his voice – extremely muffled, the words completely indistinguishable, but he could tell when he was talking and when he wasn't. Esposito's reply is short – very short. Two or three words, probably. But Lanie is silent for nearly a full minute before she replies, "See you, Javi," and hangs up.

"I should get back to the morgue," she says as she stands up, and her voice holds the same quality it did as she said 'see you, Javi'. Distant. Faint. Subdued.

"Any new leads?" Castle asks.

"Not much," Lanie tells him. "They found the knife close to Montgomery's house, and the DNA on the handle matches the DNA they found on the rifle. It's the shooter again, but it's like he's a ghost. We're not any closer to finding him than we were a year ago."

"Not true," he counters. "We've got a murder victim. We've got a second attack on Kate. We've got _evidence. _They'll figure something out."

"Will they?"

A pause. Then, "They need Beckett."

"They need Beckett _and _you," Lanie corrects.

"I can't," he warns. "Not right now." He can't go into the 12th just yet. Not so soon. He'll give it a day, maybe more. Once he's seen Kate. Once he's proven to himself that she is, in fact, alive and well. Then maybe.

"I figured," she replies. "I'm going to head into the morgue. Anything happens, you'll call me?"

"Of course. Oh, and Lanie?"

"Yeah?"

"If my daughter shows up, send her home."

She nods. "Will do." Tugging her fingers through her snarled dark hair, she sets off down the hallway, leaving Castle alone. So close to Kate, and yet so distant. Just across the hall and worlds away. With no one and nothing to keep him company but worry, fear, and guilt.

He's alone. There's no one else in sight, but that's not the problem. He's been by himself a million times before. It's not the physical solitude that bothers him – endless hours spent alone is an occupational hazard that comes with being a writer. No, the loneliness that's tearing him apart is mental, emotional, metaphorical. He's been feeling it for nearly ten hours now, but he's never been physically alone in that time. Someone has always been there – Kate unconscious on the ground, the doctors in the ambulance, Ryan and Esposito and Martha and Alexis and Jim Beckett and eventually Lanie in the hospital waiting room. He hadn't realized it, but their presence had somehow been suppressing the ache of separation from her, reducing it to a dull roar rather than an all-consuming scream. And now it feels like he's falling to pieces. His misery is an inferno that's burning him alive and the wind that scatters his ashes. _She's alright, _he tells himself. _She's going to be fine. She's alive. She's alright. _But it doesn't change the fact that he is the reason for her pain. He is behind this next in her constantly growing list of near-death experiences. He is responsible.

Dr. Allyson Lam's reassurances can't stem the flow of guilt that rushes through his veins.

They can't erase his shame.

He isn't sure why, but he pulls his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it, and opens his list of contacts. She's right at the top – the first letter of her last name ensures that, but it seems appropriate nonetheless. He taps her name with his thumb and holds the phone to his ear.

"_Hey, you've reached Kate Beckett. I can't answer my phone right now, but leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."_

He hangs up before it beeps. It's a generic message, the kind most everyone has on their phone. But the words are her words, the voice her voice, and hearing her speak… it helps, somehow. It's a strange reassurance that Kate Beckett really did – really does – exist, that at one point she held her phone to her lips and recorded a message for anyone who calls her at a time where she can't answer, that her mouth once formed these words. And despite the fact that her death would in no way have affected her voicemail, hearing it somehow helps him to believe that she is, in fact, alive. That Dr. Allyson Lam, with her curly black hair and limited social skills, was telling the truth. That Kate really will be fine.

He promised Lanie he would call her if anything happened.

But for the longest time, nothing does.

He simply sits there, doing nothing, wanting nothing but to see her. Nine o' clock, ten o'clock, eleven o' clock, twelve o' clock. At about twelve-thirty, Alexis brings him his laptop and a cup of coffee. She tells him that she couldn't sleep, so she went to help Dr. Parish in the morgue, but Lanie, true to her word, sent her away. So she came to see her father, bringing him his laptop and a drink, hoping that perhaps she could stay there with him and wait for Kate to awaken.

He'd like her to stay. He really would.

But he's begin selfish; he can see in her eyes that she's dead on her feet. So he takes the coffee and the computer, thanks her, and instructs her to go home and try to sleep again. She doesn't like it – he can tell – but she obeys.

He drinks his coffee in silence, enjoying it far less than he typically would. He's grateful for the new alertness it brings, but for four years, coffee in his mind has been associated with her. It is her addiction, and it is his subtle way of showing her he cares.

He opens his laptop, thinking it will be good to have something to do as he waits, but all he ends up doing is staring blankly at the screen, the words of Frozen Heat staring back out at him. He has written so many endings to this story; Gina's pushing him to just choose one, to finish it and send her the completed manuscript because he's already late, but none of them feel right. Especially now.

He's written his way into a corner and without her, his North Star, to guide him, he can't find his way back out again.

He's lost.

"Mr. Castle?"

He closes his laptop and looks up; it's Allyson Lam again, and she's looking relieved to finally know the identity of this other man who stood when she called for Mr. Beckett.

"What's going on?" he asks immediately. "Is she alright? Is something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, Mr. Castle," she tells him. "She's awake."

"Awake?" Awake. Not only is she alright, she's _awake. _"Can I see her?"

She lifts one eyebrow just slightly, but it's enough to cause it to vanish beneath her mane of black curls. He can practically see her mind working, wondering what the relationship could possibly be between these two people, Richard Castle and Kate Beckett, who call each other by their surnames, who do not wear wedding bands on their fingers but, by the way they look at each other, speak of each other, seem like perhaps they ought to. But she does not ask any questions; when she speaks, she says only four words, but they send a wave of incredible, unbridled relief washing over him.

"She's asking for you."


	5. I'll Be Seeing You

_And you can't fight the tears that aren't coming, or the moment of truth in your lies_

_-Iris, The Goo Goo Dolls_

-0-0-0-

"Castle."

She's sitting up in bed, a thin blanket over her legs and many pillows behind her back. The blue hospital gown hangs loosely on her figure; her hair falls in tangled brown waves around her shoulders; her skin is pale; and her hazel eyes are narrowed in a way that makes it look like she's exhausted. She looks nearly as weak as she did after her shooting.

Nearly.

But she's smiling. The corners of her lips are curved upward in a sweet, hopeful expression. She's smiling.

At him.

"Hey," he says, fighting to stay as casual as possible. Because he knows that if he doesn't stay casual, he'll do something stupid. Like throw his arms around her, which would probably be painful for her in her condition. Or profess his love for the second time, something for which this is neither the time nor the place. He can't do anything like that – not here, not now – but he doesn't want to freeze her out. He wants to somehow let her know how much she matters.

Casual but caring. Professional but not cold.

"I haven't got flowers this time," is what he comes up with. "I didn't have the chance – would've had to leave –" God, he's screwing this up.

"It's fine, Castle," she assures him. "I don't need flowers."

She's talking to him. Dammit, Kate Beckett is _talking _to him. She's not just alive. She's not just awake. She's talking to him. And in that instant, the reality of what he's experiencing hits him. It's true – she's alright. She's not dead. She's here, with him, alive and beautiful. He does not have to be responsible for her death.

The sudden, intense relief nearly knocks him off his feet.

He staggers the last few steps towards her and practically falls into the chair beside her bed. She's looking at him with a slightly concerned expression – as ironic as that is – but after a few seconds she seems to decide that he's alright, and goes back to smiling at him.

"I would've preferred coffee, anyways," she tells him, in a feeble attempt at lightness.

"Do you want coffee?" he asks, suddenly worried. "I can get coffee. The stuff they have here is probably crap, but I can find a Starbucks if you want –"

"Castle!" The urgency in her tone shuts him up at once, but when he looks up at her face she's still smiling. "I'm kidding," she says. "I don't need coffee. It's fine." He relaxes visibly, but she's still caught in the desire to comfort him. She holds out a hand to him, but the tubes attached to her arm are too short and she can't quite reach. Thankfully, he senses her predicament and lifts his own hand, closing the distance between their palms; their hands fall, fingers entangled, onto the blanket just beside her.

"How're you doing?" he asks. It's a stupid question – he knows that. But he has to ask. He'd seem insensitive if he didn't.

"I've been better," she replies honestly, shifting slightly and wincing as pain shoots through her lower back. But thanks to the painkillers they've been pumping into her system, the brief agony is gone just as quickly as it came. "Then again," she adds, determined to stay optimistic, "I've been worse."

Her comment does not have the desired effect. For a second, Castle simply looks sad; then, seized by a need to change the subject, he asks, "You know what happened? Remembering everything okay?" He had meant it as a simple question, an inquiry into whether she, perchance, knew something that would help them to catch the man who had shot and stabbed her – perhaps something she had noticed while falling towards the pavement, he didn't know, But he couldn't keep a touch of resentment out of his voice. It crawled into his tone, uninvited, unwanted, and as soon as he noticed it he squashed it into the background, but it was too late; he could not grab the words from the air, shove them back into his mouth, and repeat them in the manner in which he'd intended them.

Kate casts him a slightly puzzled look before replying, "I don't know, Castle. It happened so fast. I didn't even see the guy. One second, I was standing up, and the next, I was on the ground. I barely even registered what was happening. And you were talking to me, and then I passed out… and I woke up here, with Dad." She pats the mattress to indicate that she does not just mean here in the hospital; she means here, in this room, in this bed.

Castle glances around the room, expecting to see Jim Beckett hunched in a chair in some corner, but he's nowhere to be seen. "He left," Kate tells him, once again demonstrating her abnormal ability to practically read his mind. "Just a few minutes before you came in. He understood that we might want to be alone."

_That we might want to be alone._

Might.

It wasn't _'That we want to be alone'. _But it was pretty darn close.

He could work with 'might'.

"Have the boys found anything?" she asks when the silence becomes just a tad too long.

"They matched the DNA on the knife with that of your shooter." Okay, perhaps his bedside manner could use some work, but he could see no reason to lie to her. She could handle it; besides, if he didn't tell her, she would find out later on and demand to know why he kept this from her. "Other than that, nothing."

She nods; she had not been expecting much. "They're working the case right now?"

"Yeah."

"Lanie?"

"At the morgue. I told her I'd call when you woke up."

"And have you?"

"Not yet," he admits. "I will."

Kate nods again. "Okay. When you've done that, you could head to the precinct if you wanted to. Work on the investigation with Ryan and Esposito. I'll join you as soon as I'm able."

"Alright. I –" Wait. Does she mean what he thinks she means? "No, Kate. You can't."

She frowns. "Can't what, Castle?"

"Can't keep investigating," he clarifies. "Can't work on your mother's case. You have to stay away. If there's anything last night proves, it's that they're ready to kill you if you get any closer than you already are."

"Castle," she says, her tone that of someone trying to explain something simple to a small child who refuses to understand. "They've want me dead for almost a year now. I know that. But I'm still here."

"No," he insists. "You don't kn-" He stops himself, but it's too late. The words have escaped; he can't pull them from her ears and force them back between his lips.

"I don't know what?" Her expression becomes hard, cold. "What don't I know, Castle?"

He sighs. He did not want to tell her, not like this. But he has no choice now. "You told me," he begins, "that you wake up sometimes wondering how it is you're still alive. The truth is…" He takes a deep breath, and forces himself to continue. "Before he died, Montgomery sent some… some files… to a friend of his. If those files ever got out… they would hurt some extremely powerful people."

"The people behind my mother's murder." She's smart; she's figuring it out for herself. He can practically see her brain working as she puts together the pieces, linking the coincidences and turning a jumbled mess into something comprehensible.

"Yes," he agrees reluctantly. "Montgomery's friend has… he's been using those files as leverage, to blackmail these people. As long as they don't go after certain people, the files stay hidden. Montgomery's family – his wife, his daughters, his son. And…"

The pause seems to last an eternity. Finally, she breaks the silence.

"And me."

"And you," he admits.

"But they still tried to kill me."

"When you were shot, Montgomery's friend hadn't gotten the files yet."

She nods; he can see in her expression that everything is beginning to make sense to her. She's reviewing what she knows and what he's told her, creating a story with a beginning, a middle, and no end in sight.

"Montgomery made a deal for my life," she says, as though running it past him to make sure she's got everything right.

"Yes."

"And you were in on it."

"I knew about it."

"Why?" she demands. "Why did you know, but not me? Why didn't you tell me? And why," she finishes dramatically, "is it so important that I stay away from the case?"

"That was part of the deal," he tells her. "You can't investigate. If you start digging, you're not safe anymore. They'll kill you."

The truth is dawning on her – he can see it in her eyes. "Our first case together after I was shot," she says. "You convinced me to walk away. This… this is why?"

He nodded sadly.

"You lied to me." She's literally shaking now. Her eyes are no longer narrowed; they're wide, clear, beautiful hazel, filled with tears that she's somehow managing to keep from spilling out onto her cheeks. "All this time, you've been lying to me."

"I had to, Kate!" He's desperate now – desperate that she knows, desperate that she understands. "They would've killed you, and I…" He seems to deflate, and when he speaks again, his voice is much softer. "I couldn't let that happen."

"I can take care of myself, Castle."

"No," he insists. "You can't. Not this time, Kate. They'll kill you."

"I can't stop now." Her voice is sad now, but it rings of truth. She understands where he's coming from, and she's sorry. But she won't back down. "I can't," she repeats. "I'm too close to walk away now."

"Have you been listening to me?" He's loud again, angry again. "They will murder you. Don't think that because you've survived before, you're safe. They're just going to keep trying, and eventually they will succeed."

"You can't know that."

"Yes, I can." He sighs, shaking his head. "Kate, you are the strongest person I know, but this isn't a battle you can win."

She opens her mouth to deliver an angry, withering retort, but nothing comes out. So she just takes a few deep breaths and smiles sadly. "I won't back down, Castle," she tells him. "I can't. I'm either doing this with you or without you." The words cause her far more pain than the knife in her back did. She doesn't want him to leave. She doesn't want to do this without him. She's not even sure that she can.

But clearly he has more faith in her than she does, because he nods and stands, pulling his hand from hers. "Then you're doing it without me," he says, and her heart plummets. "If your mother's death means more to you than your own life, then fine," he continues. "Nothing I say is going to change that. But I'm not going to stay and watch you throw your life away." Without waiting for her to reply, he turns and walks away, leaving her staring after him with disbelief and misery clear on her face; he doesn't look back or speak again until he reaches the door.

"I'll be seeing you, Beckett."

The use of her last name is an insult. It's his way of distancing himself from her emotionally, making her less of a friend – or whatever they were – and more of a simple source of information in his mind. Her mind wanders, remembering a line from a television show he talked her into watching a while back:

"_We were coworkers, and now we're not, which makes us… nothing."_

Nothing.

They would never be nothing. How could they ever be nothing? They meant far too much to each other for them to ever be nothing.

Or so she thought.

But as he walks out and closes the door behind him without so much as a "Get well soon," she can't help thinking, _maybe she was wrong. _


	6. The First Day of the Future

_Who's never left home, never struck out, to find a dream and a life of their own_

_-Wide Open Spaces, The Dixie Chicks_

-0-0-0-

It didn't matter that she was about to cut a body open. When she heard her cell phone, she literally ran across the room to pick it up, answering it before the first ring had even finished.

"Lanie Parish."

"She's awake."

Castle's words send intense relief washing over her, and she relaxes; a huge weight has just been lifted off of her shoulders. "She's awake?" she repeats, as though unsure that she's heard right.

"Yeah." There's something weird about Castle's voice, she realizes. It's dark, filled with badly concealed anger and sadness.

"Castle?" she asks. "Everything alright?"

"Huh?" Now he sounds far too innocent. "Yeah, everything's fine."

"Right." The sarcasm in her tone is palpable. "Anything you're not telling me?"

"No," he quips. "She's awake, and she's going to be fine. She'll probably want to see you."

"You've talked to her?"

"Yeah. She seems like herself." His tone makes her wonder whether or not he considers that a good thing.

"Give me a sec." Lanie sets her phone down on the counter, tugs off her pink gloves and drops them in the trash, grabs her bag and slings it over her shoulder, and picks up the phone again. "Alright, I'm on my way. Can I meet you there?"

A pause. Then, "Actually, I'm going to head home."

That's weird. "Okay," she replies, fighting to keep skepticism out of her voice. "Have you told Ryan and Esposito yet?"

"No," he says. "Should I call them, or –?"

"I'll take care of it," she assures him. "Alright. See you, Castle."

"Bye." And then he hangs up.

Lanie pushes through the door, frowning and shaking her head, sure she'll never understand the bizarre behavior of Richard Castle. As she walks towards the exit, she dials Esposito's number from memory; he picks up almost before she gets the phone to her ear.

"Lanie," he greets. "You need us?"

"No, you're good," she replies. "Beckett's awake."

There's a crash, and she can practically see him standing up so suddenly his chair topples backwards; she doesn't bother to suppress a smile. "Really?" he asks. "She's awake?"

"Yeah. Castle just told me."

"Really?" Esposito repeats – he sounds slightly hurt. "He told you before us?"

She shrugs, and remembers a split second later that he can't actually see her. "You know now," she says. She's reached her car; she spends a few seconds fishing her keys out of her bag, presses the button to unlock the car, throws open the door, and slides into the driver's seat.

"I guess," he replies. "I'll tell Ryan. Meet you at the hospital?"

"Sure."

"Alright. See you there, chica."

It's not exactly the same as the way he ended their last phone call. But it's close enough to remind her, close enough to give her pause. She barely manages a casual "See you," before hanging up. She jams her keys into the ignition with unnecessary force, turns them, and begins to back out of the parking lot, feeling slightly guilty that the focus of the chaos in her mind is not Kate Beckett.

She isn't sure what she and Javier are. Since they broke up, she's been telling herself that it clearly wasn't meant to be – clearly, she and the homicide detective did not have the same chemistry bestowed upon her best friend and her partner. They gave it a shot, she told herself, and now they're able to move on with the knowledge that they were not destined to succeed as a couple. But now she isn't sure. She knows that they ended it far too soon for either's liking. But that isn't what she's questioning.

She's questioning whether she wanted to end it at all.

-0-0-0-

He doesn't pack much. He's not hiring movers to bring his bed and his couch and his television – there's plenty of furniture where he's going. He doesn't pack much because he really doesn't need much.

He packs all of his clothes in one box. He fills another five boxes with treasured keepsakes and pieces of furniture he can't bear to part with. Things like the lamp with the skull that lives in his office. And he fills two more boxes with books – and, of course, his laptop.

This is all he brings with him. Eight boxes, holding all the things he'll need to start again.

He'll miss this place. He'll miss the city; he'll miss the décor he's worked so hard to perfect over the years; and, of course, he'll miss his mother and daughter. But Alexis is going to college anyways – he won't be with her even if he were to stay. And he has to leave. He can't stay here – it's too close. Too close to her, too close to everything he has to get away from.

God, he sounds just like her. Making excuses like she did after she froze him out for three months after her shooting. He was so angry then, but here he is, about to do the same thing to her for who knows how long.

He feels like such a hypocrite.

But he's not backing down now. He's made his choice.

"Darling, are you sure about this?"

Castle turns; Martha is standing in the doorway of his office, looking concerned. "Yeah," he tells her, carefully placing _Storm Fall _in the book box.

"This is a big decision."

"I know, Mother," he says. "I'm not a kid anymore. I can make big decisions on my own."

"I know, I'm just saying –"

"Well, don't." He's being hardon her – he knows that. She's not responsible for any of this. It's not fair that he takes out his anger on her. He opens his mouth to apologize, but she holds up a hand to stop him. She understands.

"You need to get away from her, I know," she says. "But you don't have to move to do that."

"Yes, I do." He picks up the next book in the pile – _Heat Wave. _And he stops. To bring, or not to bring? That is the question… The Nikki Heat novels are, without a doubt, a reminder of the life he's trying to leave behind. They're a reminder of her. All the same, he's not sure he'd feel right without them.

"Just think about what you're doing," she suggests. "Just for a minute. You love her, Richard – I know you do – and you are not one to walk away just because she doesn't feel the same."

Shaking his head, he places _Heat Wave _in the box, on top of the Derrick Storm novels, and puts _Naked Heat _and _Heat Rises _in on top of it. He has to take them. He is leaving Kate behind; he can't leave Nikki, too.

"I can't talk her out of chasing her mother's killers," he tells Martha, piling _In a Hail of Bullets _and _Flowers For Her Grave _on top of the Heat novels. "And I can't sit on the sidelines and watch as she gets herself killed. There's only one option."

He closes up the box, sealing it with packing tape and picking it up. It's the last box he has to take down to the car, and then he'll be ready to leave whenever he chooses. "I'll stay for Alexis's graduation," he tells Martha as he pushes through the doorway past her and heads for the door. "After that, I'm gone."

-0-0-0-

The next day passes agonizingly slowly. Castle stays out of the house as much as possible, in the hopes that Lanie, Esposito, and Ryan won't be able to find him, because by this time Beckett has surely told them what he's done. Their faces appear on the screen of his cell phone many times over the course of the day, but he never answers. He receives quite a few texts, but he never replies. He's instructed Martha not to answer the door should any of the three come knocking. If all goes well, they won't know where to find him.

It's for the best. He hates freezing them out like this, but he has to distance himself from all aspects of this life. He has to start fresh in a new place, in a new life, and he won't be able to do that if people from his old life are constantly calling his cell or knocking on his door.

For the first time, he is grateful that it was Gina, not Kate, who accompanied him two years ago. So long as he gets a new phone number, and so long as Martha keeps her word and holds her tongue, he will never have to see any of them again.

It pains him that this is what he is wishing for. He'll miss them with all his heart – he's absolutely sure of that. But this is something that he has to do.

He spends most of his day at The Old Haunt, hiding out in his office and finishing Frozen Heat. He'd decided on an ending – a near-death experience for Nikki, and in the meantime, Rook, fleeing an unknown third party who seems determined to hunt him down, leaves her with nothing but a note and a promise he'll someday return. He knows Kate will not miss the significance.

The difference is, for Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook, there will be a reunion. If all goes according to plan, he and Kate will never have that luxury.

He emails Gina, and she responds almost immediately – she's delighted that he's finished but is wondering why he's chosen to move out of the city, questioning his ability to function (and more importantly, write) without his muse. He assures her that he knows what he's doing, and by the lack of a response, he guesses that she believes him.

Predictably, Alexis delivers her valedictorian speech beautifully. He congratulates her, hugs her goodbye, and then she leaves for her all-nighter and he leaves for his new life.

It shouldn't take him more than two hours to get to his house in the Hamptons. He'll arrive before the evening officially becomes the night.

Today is the first day of his new future.


	7. Three Years Later

_If someone said three years from now, you'd be long gone, I'd stand up and punch them out, 'cause they're all wrong, I know better, 'cause you said forever, and ever, who knew_

_-Who Knew, P!nk_

-0-0-0-

**THREE YEARS LATER**

"_Richard Castle, you cannot avoid me forever. You owe me the manuscript for you next book in two weeks, and knowing you, you probably haven't started. Do you even know what your next series is going to be about?" A scoff. "After Derrick Storm and Nikki Heat, fans are expecting something good. You had better not disappoint them. Oh, and don't forget – weekend in the city. You're not going to weasel your way out of it this time. I mean, seriously, Richard – think about how many people live in New York City. What are the chances you'll run into any of them?"_

Once the message was over, Castle turns off the phone and places it on the coffee table. Gina's right – he hasn't started. Now that he's finished the Nikki Heat series, he's finding himself utterly without inspiration. He'd started a story about a twenty-something rookie FBI agent named Natalia Young, but he'd scrapped it after about forty pages. Natalia had just felt… wrong. Flat. One-dimensional. She had no substance. Her I'm-young-and-reckless-and-I'm-going-to-do-the-exact-opposite-of-what-I'm-told-to thing was the only element of her personality that there was. She lacked depth of any kind – she was simply a young, impulsive agent who, in the real world, would probably have gotten fired by now. So now he has nothing.

She's also right that his strange paranoia of venturing into the city was exactly that – a strange paranoia. For three years, he's been living in fear that Ryan, Esposito, Lanie, or – worst of all – Beckett herself would show up at his door and drag him back into the life he's trying to avoid. He's tried desperately to rid himself of all aspects of it, to push his memories of his time with them to the back of his head, to put them all in the past. And – with the exception of his obsessive need to check the newspaper and the news channel every day just to make sure that the people behind Kate's mother's murder haven't finally managed to kill her – he's pretty sure he's moved on. He's forged himself a new life – a life as Richard Castle, the writer, not Richard Castle, the wannabe cop, or Richard Castle, Kate Beckett's shadow, or Richard Castle, the lovesick teenage boy. He's finally stopped living in the past and has begun to live in the present.

He takes a sip of his coffee, picking up the newspaper and glancing at the title page. The date at the top reads Friday, September 4th, 2015, and the headline has something to do with riots in China – he really couldn't care less. He hums quietly to himself as he idly flips through the pages, like he does every morning, scanning for the same dreaded article he searches for every day.

He doesn't find it.

But he does find something.

The title reads '**ONE NYPD DETECTIVE PUTS ANOTHER BEHIND BARS**'. At the top there's a photo of a man that he recognizes, but it takes him a second to place him – Ethan Slaughter, the gang cop he worked a single case with three years ago. He's aged, but he's still recognizable. The article tells of how he's been arrested for the murder of a suspect in one of his cases.

And there she is, in the bottom left-hand corner.

Like a bad omen, warning him to stay away from the city, from the possibility of emblems of his old life.

Or perhaps like the angel of destiny, calling him back.

He closes the paper quickly, desperate to get the photo out of his sight. Because he doesn't want to look at Kate Beckett, doesn't want to think about Kate Beckett – not now, not ever.

Because he doesn't miss her.

And he's over her.

But he does.

And he's not.

-0-0-0-

"What've we got?"

Lanie stands, sweeping waves of black hair out of her face. The tips of the longest strands nearly reach her elbows now; she really needs to either get a haircut or put the stuff up in a ponytail. "She was shot in the leg inside the building," she says. "There's a blood trail – she tried to run, but whoever killed her followed her and shot her in the back." She glances past Kate, as though expecting to see someone else following her.

Even after three years, moments like this still send her mind spiraling towards thoughts of him.

So she looks down at the body – a small, skinny, stereotypical gorgeous blond, with softly curled yellow hair falling to her shoulders, a tight-fitting outfit, and too much makeup – and tries to concentrate on it rather than the more painful subjects that her mind is always trying to drag her towards.

"Where're the boys?"

Right. The boys.

"Ryan's going to be a bit late," she says. "Jenny's sick, and Ian's being a handful. And you should know where Javi is."

"How the hell am I supposed to know?" Lanie throws her hands in the air in exasperation. "The man is crazy."

"Crazy about you."

"Moving on," she urges, and Kate cracks a smile. This is what girlfriends are for – poking fun at and annoying the crap out of each other. "She's still got her wallet," Lanie says, picking up and tossing said wallet to Kate. "Money, credit cards, nothing's missing."

"So it wasn't a robbery," Kate muses.

Lanie shakes her head. "My guess is, she was into something. I mean, look at this place." She nods to the building behind her: a rather large, clearly long-abandoned warehouse.

Kate cranes her neck as she looks up at it, squinting to keep the sun out of her eyes. "Drug dealing?" she guesses.

"I don't know," Lanie replies. "CSU is checking around, but so far they haven't found any drugs."

"Could be something else."

"Could be." She crosses her arms in front of her chest. "So. Javi's got plans tonight – feel like coming over for a drink and some girl talk?"

"Sorry, I can't." Kate shrugs, her expression apologetic. "I've got someplace I have to be at four."

"Four!" Lanie sound outraged. "Girl, I don't know what you're going to be doing at four that prevents you from having drinks with your best friend at eight –" She stops suddenly, and her face lights up. "Wait. Does this have anything to do with –"

"Lanie." There's a warning in her voice.

Lanie puts her hands in the air, making her _I-surrender-please-don't-kill-me-I-don't-want-to-die-before-I-get-the-chance-to-bring-this-up-again-later _face (an expression she perfected years ago). "Okay, I get it. You don't want to talk about it. You'd rather I tell you who the victim is."

"Exactly. But I've got it." Kate's still holding the wallet; she's opened it and pulled out a driver's license. "Danielle Lewis." She tucks the license back into its pocket and begins going through the rest; credit cards, bills, business cards. "She's a legal secretary," she reads. "Works at a law firm downtown."

"Maybe she was killed because of a case she was working on." Kate looks over her shoulder, searching for the speaker, and her eyes land on Javier Esposito, running a hand over his head as he approaches.

"There you are," Kate calls. "Where've you been?" But he's not paying attention to her; he waves to Lanie before looking down at the body. "Who's the cheerleader?"

"Danielle Lewis," Kate tells him. "You were saying about a case she was working on?"

"Actually, I changed my mind." He seems to have just noticed the huge warehouse and is staring at it with a slightly dumbstruck expression. "She wasn't killed because of a case. She was doing something illegal."

"That's what we thought."

"If you two don't mind," Lanie interrupts, "I'm going to get Miss Lewis back to the morgue."

Kate nods. "Okay. We'll head down to the law firm. Call us if you find anything?"

"Will do."

As Esposito and Kate head for their respective cars, he asks. "Where's Ryan?"

"At home," she tells him, pulling out her keys and unlocking her car. "Ian's being a pain."

"That kid is impossible," Esposito grumbles, opening the driver's side door.

"He's sweet," Kate counters, doing the same and sliding into the seat.

"Yeah, well, he listens to you."

She's laughing as she pulls the car door closed. A year ago, something like this would have seemed impossible – it's only recently that's she's allowed herself to laugh again. But today, she has every reason to be happy.

Today, she might get him back.

-0-0-0-

"Stop staring at that thing like a lovesick teenager, will you?"

Lanie drops her hand to her side quickly, looking up to see Kate standing in the doorway of her lab. For a second, she simply makes unintelligible noises; her hands come together in front of her and she twists the diamond-studded band she had been ogling a few seconds earlier before pushing it back down into its place on her ring finger.

Kate shakes her head, stepping into the room. "You're such a hopeless romantic."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Lanie shoots back. "This mean you don't want to be my maid of honor anymore?"

"Of course not!" Kate sounds affronted. "I've been nothing but supportive. You know I wish you and Javi a perfect wedding and a wonderful future. You deserve it."

Lanie nods, smiles slightly, pauses, and says, "But you don't." It's a question hidden within a statement.

Kate sighs. "Lanie, we've been over this."

"Many times, I know. I still think you're not being honest with yourself."

"I am so being honest with myself! You know why I gave back the ring, and it wasn't because I didn't love him."

"It was so because you didn't love him," Lanie counters. "How could you, when you're still hung up on -"

"Lanie."

"- Writer Boy," she finishes defiantly, ignoring the warning. "_Your _Writer Boy. Face it, girl - you still care about him."

"I haven't seen him in three years."

"Doesn't change anything."

"It changes everything."

"No, it doesn't." Lanie sighs. "It really doesn't, Kate. You are not over that boy and I don't think you ever will be. I think you've been trying to let him go for three years, but you can't do it. And I don't think you'll last much longer."

Kate's gaze wanders from her friend's face to her own shoes; she tugs on her hair, twisting it around her fingers, as she tries desperately to come up with a response.

She can't help thinking that Lanie has no idea how right she is.

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**As of 6 AM tomorrow, I will be departing on my summer vacation - to Honduras, no less. While I'm totally psyched, there is a catch. So it is with deepest regret that I inform you that there is no internet access where I'm going, and as such, there will be no new chapters of Dry Land posted for at least one, probably two weeks. I'm really sorry about this, but I promise, I'll keep on writing and I'll have plenty of new stuff to post for you guys when I get back. Again, I'm sorry. Please don't kill me.**


	8. Maternal Instinct

_These days I wish I was six again – oh, make me a red cape, I want to be Superman!_

_-83, John Mayer_

-0-0-0-

"Hey, Kev."

Kevin Ryan looks over his shoulder at the sound of the voice – Kate Beckett is walking down the park path towards him, her strides long and powerful in four-inch heels. Her hands are shoved in the front pockets of her jeans; the autumn wind picks up her golden-brown hair and swirls it around her face; and she's smiling at him – no, past him – as she approaches.

"Kate," he greets. Over the past few years they have bonded – she is practically a part of his family, a sister, and they have consented to call each other by their first names outside the precinct. "What's up?"

"Normal stuff," she replies casually. "Body dropped. Javi and I headed to the workplace, did some interviews. You know the drill." The interviews had, for the most part, gone down the way they always did. Shocked expressions, people leaning on desks to steady themselves, disbelieving remarks of "Wait, Danielle's dead?" According to her friends, Danielle Lewis was single, an only child, orphaned at age seventeen when both of her parents were killed in a car accident. She did not seem to have any family at all, which Kate was petty enough to consider a relief – more than anything else about her job, she hated having to tell people that they would never again speak to their son, daughter, sister, brother, mother, father, uncle, aunt, niece, nephew, would never again hear their laugh or watch their lips curve up into a smile.

Most everyone seemed to get along fine with Danielle, but she was not particularly close to anyone. There was one exception, of course, a reasonably attractive brunette woman named Leah Munroe, another legal secretary with a thick Brooklyn accent who seemed – if anything – relieved that Danielle was gone. Kate asked her why; she replied with a simple "The bitch took my man." When asked to elaborate, Leah explained that she had been in what she considered a stable relationship with a lawyer at the law firm where both she and Danielle worked, a man named Christian. They hadn't been dating for long, though, and were still keeping it under wraps. "We liked the idea of a secret relationship," Leah said. "It felt scandalous, like something from a soap opera." It was April; a few weeks earlier, Leah had found a diamond engagement ring in one of Daniel's desk drawers while looking for a pen. She had kept quiet about her discovery, and waited with bated breath for him to ask. "But he never did," Leah told them, "and then one day Danielle Lewis just saunters in with that same ring on her finger. And I ask her what she's playing at, and she just gives me this winning smile and tells me that Christian Randall proposed to her. And that's when I find out that she's been stealing him away from me for months, and that's why he'd tell me to head back to my place some nights – not because he was 'working on a case', but because he was with her!"

She'd crossed her arms in front of her chest and tipped her chin up in an obvious gesture of superiority. "So yeah, I'm not sad she's dead. That bitch got what she deserved."

"That's not what I meant," Ryan says, pulling Kate from her thoughts. "What are you doing here?" He winces. "That sounded bad. I mean, it's not that I'm not happy to see you –"

Kate laughs. "Relax, Kevin. I know what you meant." She shrugs. "We're a bit shorthanded. Came to see if there was any way you could come in and work the case with us. Plus," she adds as an idea occurs to her, "Esposito is pouting because you're gone."

Ryan frowns. "Really?"

"Nah. I made that part up." And then they're both laughing, probably more than Kate's mildly humorous joke warrants, and when they recover, Ryan says, "I'd love to help, really. Who's the vic?"

"Danielle Lewis," Kate tells him. "Stereotypical blonde found in front of a shady-looking warehouse."

"Ooh. Interesting."

"Very. Get in the car and I'll fill you in on all the glorious scandals."

"Like I said, I'd love to. But…" He trails off, gesturing to what Kate had been smiling at as she walked towards him. A play structure, with a blonde two-year-old boy sitting at the top with his arms crossed in front of his chest and his eyes squeezed shut.

Kate grins. "Hey, Ian."

Ian Andrew Ryan's eyes snap open at once; his stubborn expression is replaced by one of delight. "Auntie Kate!" he crows, standing up, running to the bars at the edge of the structure, and pressing his small face in between two of them. His round, baby cheeks squish easily, but he can't get his head through past his cheekbones. His blue eyes, exactly the same as his father's, are wide with excitement; his hair, honey-blond like his mother's, is pushed back on both sides by the green-painted bars; and his lips are spread in a grin. Kate steps onto the mulch and approaches the structure, saying, "Hey, kiddo. How's school?"

Ian's eyes light up – he'd started in a Montessori toddler program just that fall, and he loves to talk about it. "So much fun," he says, stressing every word. "Learning the alphabet. I can spell!"

"Can you?"

"Uh-huh." He tries to nod, but finds it difficult with his head pressed between two bars; he pulls it out and nods fervently as thought to make up for the delay. "T-R-E-E. Tree. Like that." Smiling, he points to the closest tree to the play structure.

"Nicely done!" Kate exclaims; Ian's smile widens and he continues. "I-A-N. Ian. That's me."

"That is you."

"A-N-D-R-W." He pronounces the W like dub-loo, rather than double-you. "Andrew. Me, too. I-A-N, A-N-D-R-W."

"Right." She doesn't correct the mistake, doesn't chide him for leaving out the E – that's what teachers are for, and Kate, as Ian himself correctly observed, is more of an aunt.

"B-U-N-N-Y. Bunny. Bunnies in my class."

"Bunnies?" Ian has mentioned the class pets, two bunnies named Hershey and Milky, many times, but Kate tries to act surprised and excited every time he does. He loves it.

"Uh-huh. Bunnies. Two." As he begins rambling about the animals in his disjointed toddler language, Kate steps back to stand beside Ryan, asking softly "What's the problem?"

"He's been like this all morning," Ryan replies wearily. "Always talking, running around the house with his toy cars. I thought I'd take him to the park so he could blow off some steam, but now he doesn't want to leave. He's using his new favorite word on me."

"No?"

"Won't," Ryan corrects her, his tone dark; Kate grins.

As Ian's voice fades, Ryan steps forward, calling, "Hey, buddy? You want to go home now?"

Instantly, the joy drops off his face, his expression returns to stubborn defiance, and he sits down and crosses his arms in front of his chest again. "No," he says insistently. "Won't. Won't go home. Won't, won't, won't!"

As Ian continues to sing the word 'won't' again and again at the top of his lungs, Ryan mutters, "I am going to shoot whoever taught him that word."

Kate snorts, but composes herself and says, "Let me have a try, Kev."

"Good luck."

"Hey, Ian?" As Kate speaks and approaches, the two-year-old falls silent. "It's time to go home now," she tells him, gently but firmly. "Daddy's got to go catch bad guys."

"Like Superman," Ian says knowingly.

"Like Superman," she agrees. "So you have to go home and be with Mommy so Daddy can go catch the bad guys, okay?"

Ian pauses, tips his head to the side, considers for a second, and finally stands, saying, "Okay."

"How come he listens to you?" Ryan demands as Ian hurries to the stairs and begins to descend from the play structure.

"I'm not his parent," Kate replies instantly. "It helps. Watch out for the teenage years, though – then it's not just Mom and Dad, it's all adults."

"Comforting," Ryan mutters. There's a pause as they both watch Ian run to the bench where he's left his jacket, pick it up, and pull it on. Finally, Ryan murmurs, "You're so good with him."

"He's a sweet kid," she says.

"You've got good instincts," he comments. "Maternal instincts, that is. Among others. You'll make a good mom." She casts him a slightly strange look, and he amends his statement. "Someday. When you're ready."

Kate smiles her thanks, nodding; Ian, now completely zipped up in his tiny windbreaker, rushes to his father's side, shoots Kate a look of utter adoration, and then looks back up at his father, tugging gently on the hem of Ryan's coat. "Come on, Daddy," he urges. "Gotta get home so you can go get bad guys."

"Once he's settled in at home, meet us at the precinct," Kate tells Ryan, already beginning to walk back towards her car, but watching the father and son over her shoulder.

"Alright," he replies. "Thanks, Kate."

"No problem."

-0-0-0-

"Good, you're here."

It's almost noon now; he's meeting Gina for lunch, and when he walks up to the table, she pushes out her chair, standing.

"You sound surprised."

"Honestly?" She waits for him to sit, and then takes her seat again. "I was half expecting you not to show up, what with your weird aversion to this place. You used to love the city, Rick."

"Things change."

"For better or for worse," she agrees grimly, picking up the menu. "The sandwiches here are good. The soups are better, though."

"I'm not hungry."

She raises an eyebrow, takes a sip of her water, observes him over the rim of the glass. "I suppose things do change," she comments as she places the cup back down on the table. "So. What do you have for me?"

"What?"

She groans, exasperated. "Your new book, Richard! Honestly."

"Oh." Right. The book. "I… I haven't got much," he says lamely.

Another groan. "I knew it. Nothing. Seriously, Rick, do you even have a process?"

"Not really?" It's part statement, part question, a riddle he's forcing her to unravel.

She takes the easy way out, the petty way out. "No. Not since you stopped shadowing Detective Beckett."

Castle is just beginning to pick up his glass of water; it slips from his fingers, falling two inches back down to the table. The water inside sloshes around a bit, but only a few drops spill. They fall to the red tablecloth and splatter, forming small, dark stains, like raindrops. Or teardrops.

"Are we really going to talk about this now?"

"Touchy," Gina observes. "Alright. I'll leave it alone, for now." She reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out a piece of paper that's been folded to the point of nonexistence. It takes her a little while to unfold it, to smooth it out so it's legible. "You've got a book signing at The Regulator at one. It's already all set up, so you've got about an hour to kill until them. After that… another signing at three-thirty, and a party starting at seven. Tomorrow, you've got –"

"Gina, please." At the sound of her name, she shuts up, and he seizes the opportunity to breath before continuing. "Can't we just deal with tomorrow… tomorrow?"

She sighs, but begins re-folding the piece of paper as her subtle way of consenting. "Fine, Rick," she says, shoving the now-tiny schedule back into her pocket. "I'll leave you alone. Remember – one o' clock. The Regulator. Don't be late." She stands, picks up her purse from the back of her chair, slings it over her shoulder, and leaves him sitting alone at the table, with no desire to eat, no desire to sign books at The Radiator or wherever, no desire to attend evening parties and pretend to be the footloose, impulsive, reckless playboy he once was, no desire to try to again embody the personality that Kate forced him to leave behind.

No desire to be here at all.

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**I did say 'at least one week, maybe two', didn't I? Well, I am happy to announce that our second vacation destination (see what I did there?) where I will be spending the remainder of this lovely trip has free internet access, so I'm back! I probably won't update quite as often - there's just so much SCUBA diving to be done! - but at least I'm no longer MIA. So that's good.**

**Anyways, I'd say I'm about as glad that I've found a way to reconnect as you guys. I missed you! Also, thanks for all the awesome reviews that I was presented with when I got online again today. You guys rock my stripy socks.**

**-Caskett54**

**P.S. ****The Regulator Bookshop is a real establishment; I got my copy of the final book in what is probably my all-time favorite series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I know, boring, normal favorite series, but they're really good books) at one when it came out at midnight, so the place holds special meaning to me. Just felt like I should say something.**


	9. Definitions of Love

_And the tears come streaming down your face, when you lose something you can't replace, when you love someone but it goes to waste, could it be worse?_

_-Fix You, Coldplay_

-0-0-0-

1:30. 2:00. 2:30.

She works on the case with Ryan and Esposito, but her heart isn't in it. No, her heart is in her throat, in her head, in her brain, forcing her eyes down towards her father's watch every two minutes. Four o' clock can't arrive soon enough.

3:00. 3:30.

They make no breakthroughs. There are no drugs to be found at the crime scene, and Leah Munroe's alibi for the murder – a friend's birthday party – checks out. They are nowhere. She wants to ditch the entire thing, head for the bookstore now, but no – she promised herself she would wait. She promised herself she wouldn't barge in on him the minute the doors opened. She promised herself she would give him a few minutes of peace before she threw his world back into chaos.

3:45. She excuses herself, telling the boys she has someplace to be at four. They ask a few questions, but leave her alone when she makes it clear she doesn't want to talk. So she grabs her jacket, slings it over her shoulder, and leaves the precinct.

The drive to The Regulator Bookshop is brief and uneventful. She arrives by 3:55 – five minutes to kill before joining the people lined up outside the little store. Five minutes before she gets in line to (possibly) ruin his life.

No pressure or anything.

Not surprisingly, the memory that comes to mind as she sits in her car, thinking, drumming on the steering wheel with her fingers, is the last time she saw him. Not their awkward, angry parting in the hospital, but out in front of his apartment, the day she was released.

-0-0-0-

_She has to see him. To talk to him. To explain. She was so angry a few days ago when he admitted what he had kept from her, but her head is clearer now. She's pretty sure she can have a calm, honest conversation with him, at the end of which he will – hopefully – understand the reasons behind her actions._

_She parks her car a block away from his apartment building and walks the rest of the way. She's ready to stride inside, to wave a quick hello to Eduardo and step into the elevator, to ride all the way up to his floor and knock on his door and tell him what he needs to know._

_But none of that happens._

_Because he's not in his apartment. He's outside on the street, placing a backpack in the backseat of his Ferrari. He opens the door, slides into the driver's seat, pulls it closed behind him – and then he sees her._

_He doesn't look open-minded. He doesn't look ready to be convinced of anything. He looks almost aggravated as he says, "Something you need, Beckett?"_

_Again with the last names. It had become second nature for them at first, but over the years he began to call her Kate more and more often. And now, so far from the precinct, in a situation that's personal, not professional, he should be calling her Kate. Not Beckett. Kate._

"_Yes," she says, sounding a lot stronger than she feels. "I need to talk to you." And she walks right up to his car and stands beside the passenger side door._

"_Haven't you said enough?"_

"_No," she insists. "No, not even close."_

_He sighs. "Beckett, I'm kind of busy here. I've got places to be."_

"_Places to be? What do you mean, places –" And finally, her eyes flit to the backseat and her brain registers what he placed the backpack beside._

_Boxes._

_Oh, God._

"_Oh, God," she whispers; her thoughts are tumbling from her mouth, spilling out over her lips, and she can't stop them now. "God, Castle, what are you doing?"_

"_I'm leaving, Beckett," he replies, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. As though it were the most natural thing in the world, when really there's nothing more wrong._

"_No. No, Castle, you can't." She can feel tears forming in her eyes, but she's determined not to cry. No. No, she has to stay strong. "Please, Castle," she begs. "Please don't. Please don't leave me."_

"_See, that's just it, Kate," he tells her, seemingly oblivious to her pain. Does he not notice? Or does he just no longer care? Perhaps it's both – if the universe is so determined to torment her, why not go all out? "I asked you to do just that," he continues. "A year ago, in the cemetery. You remember."_

_It's a statement, not a question._

_Oh, God._

_Oh, God, he knows._

_He knows she remembers. He knows that she lied._

_He'll never forgive her. Not ever. Not for this._

"_But you did." He's still going. God, he's still talking. Why can't he just stop? Doesn't he know how he's hurting her? Doesn't he know that every word that he says is more painful than a bullet in her chest or a knife in her back? "You left me. For three months, you left me."_

"_I came back." Despite her best efforts, she's crying now; the tears form thin, shining lines down her cheeks, tracks for the next salty drops to race down until they reach her chin and fall, plummeting towards the ground and shattering like glass against the pavement. "I came back to you."_

"_And you lied." No, she was wrong – he knows her pain. But now she wishes he didn't, because now it's clear that he knows it and he celebrates it. He seeks to add to it, to torture her, to wound her until she's nothing but an emotionally unstable, mentally scarred wreck of a person who hides in deserted hallways and never lets people see the real her._

_The terrible thing is, when she thinks about it, that isn't a far cry from what she is now._

"_You lied to me, Kate," he says. _

"_And you to me!"_

"_It's not the same."_

"_It's exactly the same, Castle!" The tears are falling thick and fast now, and she's no longer bothering to try to stop them. "You lied to me about the most important thing in my life, and I lied to you about the most important thing in yours."_

"_Don't flatter yourself," he mutters. "I heard you. In the interrogation, with Bobby and the bomb at the Occupy Wall Street rally. I heard you. I know the truth."_

_God, so that's how he found out. In the worst way possible – the words were hers, but they were not directed at him. They were spoken not knowing he was there to hear them. They were said in the knowledge that she was safe, that telling Bobby would not bring her secret to light._

_She told him her secret, but she thought she was still the only one who knew._

"_You never cared," he's saying. "You could never lo- could never care about someone like me. You were embarrassed to think that someone like me could feel that way for you."_

"_What?" Where was he getting this from? "Castle, no, it's not like that. I –"_

"_That's right," he interrupts. "Lie to me again. Because, you know, that worked out so well the first time."_

"_Castle, no." Her words are choked, strained, misery in every syllable. "No."_

"_Whatever, Beckett," he says, and that short, simple phrase – one word, one name – hurts her more than any physical pain she's ever felt. "I have to go." And he starts the engine._

_This is it. Her last chance. He leaves now and she may never see him again. She will never get another opportunity if she lets this one pass her by._

"_I love you."_

_The words come out of their own accord, but they sound just like she wants them to, just like they do in the movies, just like she dreamed they might. Strong. Confident. Sure. True._

_For a moment, he pauses, and she lets herself dream. For a moment, she thinks perhaps he'll throw himself out of the car and pull her into his arms, pressing his lips to hers. For a moment, she thinks he won't leave; he'll stay with her._

_For a moment, she thinks she's forgiven._

_But he doesn't do anything like that. He just speaks._

"_I don't think your definition of love is the same as mine, Kate."_

_And then he presses down on the gas pedal._

_And then he's gone._

_For a minute, she just stands there, unable to move, paralyzed by the likelihood that her last moment with Richard Castle has just ended. Frozen by the possibility that she made too many of the wrong choices, that she waited far too long to tell the truth, and that she paid the price. Trapped in the knowledge that the confession she has been trying to work up the nerve to make for so long has crashed and burned, that the moment she has been anticipating for years and years has gone horribly, dreadfully wrong. Then, as though all of the muscles in her body have made a unanimous decision to all cease functioning at once, she collapses. Her body is a heap on the sidewalk in front of his apartment building and nothing more. No more significant than a black bag full of his garbage. Perhaps even less significant, because there is always the possibility that in that bag there is a treasured possession – broken, maybe, or outgrown – that he still loves but had to give up. If that is the case, the bag is far more important than her. There is nothing in her that he still loves._

_She's sobbing; she can tell by the substantial puddle forming on the ground beneath her left cheek. And she's whispering, even though she knows he's long gone, even though she knows he can't hear her._

"_I'm so sorry, Castle."_

"_I'm so sorry."_

-0-0-0-

Not a reassuring memory. Not a hopeful memory. Not a memory that will give her the strength to walk in there and declare that she cannot bear not being a part of his life any longer.

Her watch reads 4:01. Time to go.

All day, she's been trying not to run to his side before the time she told herself she would.

But now that it's here, she's not sure if she has the strength to run to him at all.

But she has to see him. She has to. And she will.

If she can't run to him, she'll crawl.

Nothing can stop her when it comes to this.

So she opens the car door and slides out, ready to join the long line of people waiting to meet Richard Castle.


	10. No Walls

_And don't you know I'm not your ghost anymore, you lost the love I loved the most_

_-Jar of Hearts, Christina Perri_

-0-0-0-

"Thank you so much. It's really an honor for me just to be here."

The girl clutches the signed copy of _Broken Heat_ to her chest, giving him a winning smile. She's fairly pretty, with waves of wheat-blonde hair, sky blue eyes, and pursed lips, and on a better day, seven years ago, he would have turned on the old Castle charm and flirted his way into dinner and – most likely – a night in a seedy motel. But that's not the person he is anymore, so he simply says, "Not a problem," and turns his gaze to the next person in line.

But she's not moving. "Hey," she begins. "Do you think, maybe – you know, if you're not busy – you could, you know… meet me for dinner? I'd really love to get to know the mind behind some of my favorite novels."

"My schedule for the weekend is pretty packed," he replies, trying to sound apologetic. "And on Sunday, I'm heading home. So I don't think I'll have a chance. Sorry."

Her shoulders slump. "It's alright," she tells him, beginning to walk away. "It was a long shot. It was really great to meet you."

She only gets a few steps before he calls out her name – the name she had him address her copy of the book to, at any rate. "Brianna!" She turns, surprised, but he's just as baffled by his actions as she. He isn't sure what she's doing. There's something about the curve of her nose, the way her lips part, the manner in which her hair curls in the loosest of ringlets, that reminds him of… he's probably just seeing things. With the backdrop of New York City as a reference, he's just seeing what he expects – fears, hopes? – to see. But there's something about her that makes him hate letting her walk away looking so sad. He has to say something.

"Maybe I'll see you at the party tonight," he manages. Let her take that any way she wants; it seems to cheer her up, anyways. "Maybe," she agrees. "I'll be seeing you, Mr. Castle." And then she's gone, and he's moving on to the next customer – young, sweet, brunette, with an expression of distinct jealousy on her face.

He signs book after book after book. He falls into the routine of book signing, the monotonous series of sayings like "Nice to meet you," "Your name is?" and "Who should I make it out to?" He barely registers the compliments that the guests shower upon him. He barely notices their faces; if they were to push their way back into the line and come to get another copy signed, even a mere two minutes later, he would not recognize them. He pays just enough attention to make sure he writes the correct name on the inside cover. Jody, Cassandra, Michael, Cynthia, Robert, Ally, Mika, Louise. And so many more. He barely even looks up from his table.

Until when he asks, "And what's your name?"

And the response is, "Castle, look at me."

And he does.

This is no figment of his imagination, no trick played on him by his mind. This is real. She is real.

She looks exactly as she did when he last saw her. Sloped nose, thin lips, arching eyebrows. High, pronounced cheekbones that define her face. Deep eyes so close to green, but with that slightest bit of brown that forces him to call them hazel. Dark waves cascading down over her shoulders, a shining waterfall around her face. She hasn't aged a day, and for a second he wonders if he's completely imagining her, if she's a hallucination brought on by his return to the set of his old life. Surely the real Kate Beckett must've changed in some small way in the years he's been gone. But no – her hair is the same length, the same style. She wears the same clothes and the same makeup, the same jeans and coats, the same barely noticeable dusting of eye shadow and gloss that gives her lips a rich bronze sheen. She has not changed.

"Something you need, Beckett?" he says. The exact same thing he said to her three years ago, the last time he ever saw her. Spoken in the exact same way – far too casually, as though he is trying to convince not only her but also himself that her appearance does not bring on an avalanche of tens, hundreds, thousands of different emotions, mixed and muddled together until he can't tell what is what.

"I need to talk to you." The same response she gave three years ago, but spoken differently. With a new desperation. With the air of someone who's starving to death, tormented by a hunger whose existence they've only just begun to accept.

"Can it wait?"

"No."

He sighs; he cannot argue with her. Never could. So he stands, saying a quick "Excuse me," to the remaining line, and follows her to an empty room in the back.

"What do you want?"

"You," she replies, and he's shocked by her honesty. "You, Castle, I… I need you. I can't –" She stops in mid-sentence, amends her statement. "We can't go on like this."

"_We _aren't doing anything, Kate," he says, and she registers the renewed use of her first name; a spark of hope flickers inside her. "I'm going about my life," he continues. "And you're going about yours."

"That's just it," she insists. "It isn't my life, Castle, not without you. And I've got a feeling the same thing is true for you. A writer is nothing without the muse that inspires him." She pauses, swallows, composes herself. "And a muse is less than nothing without the person she inspires."

He's struck by the fact that she isn't censoring her thoughts at all. This isn't a speech she's planned; whatever crosses her mind is spilling out of her mouth. There are no barriers like logic and thought to get in the way. There are no walls. Perhaps for the first time, he is speaking to the real Kate Beckett.

"So you've come to, what?" he asks, trying to remain calm in the face of all the emotion she's throwing at him. "Try to convince me to come back?" It's inconsiderate of her, really. He doesn't want to deal with these feelings, doesn't want to face such powerful, all-consuming emotions. "No." But here she is, shoving them into his face, forcing him to. It's like she's handed him a bag of rocks, saying, 'Here, this is yours. I don't care that it's heavy; I don't care if it breaks your back; I don't care if the strain of it drives you into the ground. You have to carry it.'

"I'm sorry." He's still talking, praying to every deity he can think of that the words coming out of his mouth do not betray the turmoil and chaos inside his head. "I didn't come here to rejoin your team. I have a new life now, Kate. And it doesn't involve you." And then he turns, begins to head back to his table.

"Castle, wait." And she grabs his hand to stop him.

It's not her words (he could ignore them) or her grasp (he could pull his hand free).

No, it's the feel of her skin against his that pulls him up short.

He hasn't been in physical contact with her for so long. He hasn't been in any contact with her for so long, but if he's honest with himself, it isn't speaking to her that he's missed the most. It's touching her. It's the feeling of her skin, warm, soft, tender, so unlike her personality. It's the way their bodies seem to fit so perfectly together, like puzzle pieces made specifically to click into place and stay that way forever. Their hands when they grasp them together. Their bodies when they embrace. And, surely, their lips, if they ever were to kiss.

He hasn't felt that beautiful connection in so long.

He hadn't realized until now how starved he's been for it.

"Wait," she repeats.

And he does.

"I've been trying to get over it," she begins. "For three years, I've been telling myself that I can function just fine on my own. I've been trying to convince myself that the fact that I was perfectly alright for most of my life without you means that I don't need you. But… I'm a different person now, Castle. I can't go back to being who I was before we met, and I'm not sure I even want to. But I can't be the person I want to be – the person I am – by myself."

No walls. No walls. No walls.

It's a miracle.

It takes a minute for him to remind himself that he's not supposed to care anymore.

"I'm sorry, Kate," he says, pulling his hand from hers. "Things are different now. I've moved on." He turns again, walking away, and this time she doesn't even try to stop him.

"I suggest you do the same."

And he's gone.

She stays in the back room, alone, out of sight but close enough that she can hear his muffled voice as he apologizes for the delay and returns to signing books for women he's never met. She backs up into a corner, slides down the wall until she's sitting, hugs her legs to her chest and touches her forehead to her knees. She's condensing herself into the smallest space possible, touching as many surfaces as she can in the hopes that contact with the walls and floor with anchor her to this world, because quite honestly there isn't anything else holding her here.

She's lost. She's fallen into the abyss she's been teetering on the edge of for three years, and deep down she knows she's plummeting towards her death, but everything is dark and she can't even feel the wind rushing past her. It's like she's floating. Weightless. Which doesn't make much sense because she's never felt heavier.

She's lost.

She thought she could get him back. She thought she could say a few words and mend all their wounds. But she was wrong; she's lost too much blood already and she'll die no matter what she does. Because by carving into her own chest and pulling out her heart for him, she's created an injury she'll never recover from. So she's on the ground, bleeding out with a hole in her chest and her heart in her hand.

She's lost.


	11. Just a Distraction

_Anger plays on every station, answers only make more questions, I need something to believe in, breathing sanctuary in the easy silence that you make for me_

_-Easy Silence, The Dixie Chicks_

-0-0-0-

He isn't sure what to do.

He hasn't seen Kate emerge from tiny room where they'd spoken. Perhaps she slipped out, unnoticed in the commotion of so many people waiting to get their book signed. Or perhaps she's still there. Part of him wants to go and check, but he's terrified.

The question then becomes, what is he terrified of?

That she's in that room, waiting for him, and that by walking in there he'll force himself to confront her again? That she's still there?

Or that she isn't?

Another part of him wants to run, just as he did three years ago. He wants to run as far away from the city – from her – as he can. He wants to run until his lungs are burning and his legs collapse underneath him and he lies there, on the road, unable to move, until he dies of thirst.

But then he wonders what exactly the reason would be behind his dying of thirst.

Because it sure as hell wouldn't be dehydration.

He's not thirsty for water.

Is he thirsty for a new life? For his old life before her? Is he thirsty for distance, for isolation, for the promise that he will never have to see her again?

Or is he thirsty for her?

There are so many questions and no answers at all. He's not even sure if he wants the answers he's seeking.

A lyric pops into his mind, from a song by The Dixie Chicks, a favorite band of Alexis's:

_Answers only make more questions_

She's listened to that song, _Easy Silence, _so many times; without warning, the rest of the verse is there, playing in his head.

_Monkeys on the barricade_

_are warning us to back away_

_they form commissions, trying to find_

_the next one they can crucify_

_Anger plays on every station_

_Answers only make more questions_

_I need something to believe in_

_Breathing sanctuary…_

Every word resonates with him in a way song lyrics never have before. And then there are words in his mind, in her voice, something she told him so many years ago, when he asked her how you know when you're in love…

"_All the songs make sense."_

But are the lyrics of this song – which most certainly make sense to him in this moment – telling him that he still loves her? Or that he's moved on?

_Answers only make more questions…_

Everyone's gone from the bookstore now; the signing is over, and he's by himself, sitting at his table. So he barely even notices that he's humming the song until he reaches the end of the verse, and the lyrics of the chorus spring into his mind, and the song takes on an entirely new meaning.

_In the easy silence that you make for me_

_It's okay when there's nothing more to say to me_

_In the peaceful quiet you create for me_

_And the way you keep the world at bay for me_

Not exactly right – with Kate, there's no such thing as silence, and there's certainly no such thing as easy. But strangely, the lyrics still make sense to him…

…_**Oh.**_

He can see why Alexis enjoys this group's music. It definitely brings about a certain level of clarity.

Still, there are questions. There is doubt. Has he moved on? Really?

Can he?

He's caught glimpses of Demming from time to time at the 12th. It doesn't matter who else is there – Ryan, Esposito, Castle – he looks past them all. He only sees Kate. And three years ago, when Kate was stabbed, he saw Josh in the hospital. His reaction to the news. All of these factors – the stolen glances when they think she isn't looking, the deep concern for her wellbeing – add up to one more question.

Is it even possible to move on with someone like Kate?

All of these contemplations, and still he isn't sure what to do.

He's supposed to go to the party. Gina wants him to go to the party. He's expected to go to the party.

Kate's expecting him to go to the party.

He doesn't know how he feels about her right now, but he knows he can't deal with her again so soon. He needs some space, at least for a little while. And while a party would offer the opportunity to slip, just for a couple of hours, back into the personality of Rick Castle, the playboy (the jerk, the asshole), there's a very good chance she'll be able to find him there.

He can't go to his old loft, where he's staying over the weekend. She could find him there, too.

He can't just wander aimlessly. He needs purpose.

But no matter how much he considers it, there's nothing. Nothing he could do to satisfy both his need to stay away from her and his need to actually do something.

The answer doesn't come until he steps outside the Regulator.

There she is. Sitting on the windowsill with her back pressed up against the glass, a book – his book – open in her lap. With one hand, she's holding the pages down so the wind won't turn them for her; with the other, she shields her eyes from the sun. Her head is bent, yellow hair forming a waving curtain between her face and the world.

Brianna.

He hadn't taken the time to appreciate the entirety of what she looked like before. She really is pretty – not beautiful, certainly not Kate, but very pretty. She wears dark blue skinny jeans that perfectly accentuate the curves of flawless legs. Her shirt is purple and strapless, with a heart-shaped top, tight across her breasts, but billowing out loosely below. A cropped green denim jacket, the kind which one wears for both warmth and fashion, hangs off her form, open in the front, the sleeves tight all the way down her arms. Her shoes are soft, comfortable sneakers that were probably once white, but frequent use has made them scuffed and stained. Her jeans are rolled up just a bit at the bottom, so he can see about an inch of blue and black striped socks. It's an easy outfit – naturally, effortlessly adorable. It's casual. So many women turn up at his book signings in high heels and mini-dresses and too much makeup, hoping to awe their favorite author with their forced beauty. Brianna isn't like that. Her outfit and mannerisms tell him all he needs to know – she isn't trying to make an impression. She's trying to show him who she is and hoping he'll like her for it.

He does.

She's just a distraction. Just an excuse to get him away from Kate, both mentally and physically. Just like Jacinda was years ago. But Jacinda… she was fun, but she was fake. She was a flight attendant, for crying out loud – she was required to be fake. But it was this that drew him to her. Her obvious, uncomplicated falseness. She was an emblem of his past, the sort of girl the old Rick Castle would have gone for in a heartbeat. Beautiful, but empty. Like a broken promise.

Brianna and Jacinda are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Jacinda bathed in falseness, while Brianna flaunts her true self. She bares her soul for all the world to see. She opens up and hopes for the best. If Jacinda cloaked herself in designer clothes and painted her face with makeup, Brianna walks down the street without a stitch on, telling people, _"This is who I am. If you don't like it, you don't have to look."_

Brianna, he's sure, had never built up a wall inside.

She's just a distraction. Just an excuse.

But that's exactly what he needs right now.

"Hey," he calls casually. "Brianna."

She looks up from her book – his book, that is. She looks a little bit surprised to see him, but she brushes it aside quickly as she marks her page, tucks the book into the huge black bag hanging from her shoulder, and stands, sweeping wheat-blonde waves out of her face and tucking them behind her ear. "Hey," she replies, just as casually, a smile spreading over her face. She's happy to be talking to him. She's happy he remembers her name. But she's not going to jump up and down and squeal like a deranged fangirl. No, she's just going to smile and be happy.

"I changed my mind," he says, speaking quickly, as though he feels he needs to get all the words out before he changes it back. "About dinner," he adds, in case she misunderstands. "Tonight?"

"Tonight?" she repeats, frowning. "Don't you have a party or something?"

He shrugs, trying to seem indifferent. "Hey. It's my party, I can ditch if I want to."

Her smile widens. "Alright. Do you have somewhere in mind?"

"I do." He doesn't. But he'll figure something out.

"Are you going to tell me?"

"I don't think so."

A laugh. "Alright. Give me your hand."

He's confused, but he does as she says, holding out his hand as though expecting to shake hers. But she doesn't grasp his hand as Kate did earlier – no, he's not going to think about Kate.

Brianna pulls something from her pocket, a pen, and grabs his hand – to stabilize it as she turns it so his palm faces up, not for the sake of holding it. She clicks the pen and scribbles a few words on his palm. "That's my address," she says, letting go of his hand and putting the pen back in her pocket. "Pick me up at seven?"

"Sounds good."

"Alright, then." He turns to walk away, but he barely makes it a few steps before she calls, "Mr. Castle?"

"Rick," he corrects, turning around. If they're going to go out for dinner, she can't keep calling him 'Mister', and he certainly doesn't want her calling him Castle.

"Rick, then," she agrees. "This place you're planning on taking me – how formal is it?"

"Why do you ask?"

She laughs, as though it should be abundantly obvious. "So I know what to wear," she tells him.

"Oh." Of course. "Something nice," he says lamely. "But, you know… nothing too formal."

"Alright." She nods. "So, like, a little black dress?"

"Perfect."

"Alright." She uses that word a lot. Maybe it's something she always does, or maybe it's just a nervous habit. Maybe she's noticed, or maybe it's so instinctual that she hasn't picked up on the repetition. Perhaps he'll bring it up over dinner. "I'll see you, Mr. Ca- Rick." As she turns, she pulls his book from her bag, opens it, and continues reading as she walks. As a result, she very nearly runs into someone, a serious-looking man with a dark, receding hairline. Castle's just out of earshot, but by the movement of her lips, the way she's using her hands as she speaks, he can tell she's apologizing profusely. The man holds up a hand to stop her, telling her it's quite alright. She says something – probably some self-deprecating remark, if the way she shrugs her shoulders sheepishly is any indication – and both she and the until-recently-serious-looking man laugh.

She's just a distraction.

But she's a pretty good one.

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE/DISCLAIMER THINGY:**

**I do not own The Dixie Chicks, nor do I own their song **_**Easy Silence. **_

**I don't own Castle either.**


	12. Breakdowns and Bad Ideas

_Once upon a time, I was falling in love, now I'm only falling apart_

_-Total Eclipse of the Heart, Bonnie Tyler_

-0-0-0-

"So I ran toxicology. There's no trace of an sort of drugs in her system. No alcohol, either. But what I did find is – Beckett? Are you listening to me?"

"Huh?" Kate blinks, shaking her head as thought to clear it; having drifted into a sort of vague stupor, she'd barely heard a word her friend had said until she'd begun waving a hand in front of her face.

"Earth to Beckett," Lanie says cynically. "Come in, Beckett."

"Oh – right." Kate nods. "The victim. What were you saying?" God, she sounds so frazzled. She has to worry about lying in front of Lanie on a good day because of the way the ME seems to be able to read her mind. She'll see through this horrible act of casual indifference in a split second.

"Kate." Sure enough, there's concern in Lanie's voice. "What's going on?"

In reply, Kate bursts into tears.

It's so not like her. It's so very much not like her, and she's cursing herself internally for letting what was left of her wall crumble to dust, for not standing up straight and holding back the tears and staying strong like she normally does.

But she can't. She doesn't have it in her, not anymore. Everything that she ever was is collapsing around her and there's nothing she can do. Her world is falling to pieces and trying to hold it together is sapping all the strength she has.

"Oh, honey." Lanie pulls off her pink gloves, sets them on the table, and crosses to the other side to put a hand on Kate's shoulder. "What's wrong?"

It takes Kate a minute to compose herself enough to reply. She pushes back the choked wails trying to escape her throat and does her best to stem the flow of water from her eyes. She rubs her fingers repeatedly over her cheeks, smearing away the teardrops. She swallows, tries to speak, and swallows again, but she can't get rid of the lump in her throat. So she does her best to talk around it.

"I found him."

The words are hoarse and weak, but potent nonetheless; Lanie doesn't have to ask what 'he' she's referring to. "What? When?" she demands. "How?"

"In the city for the weekend," she whimpers. Her mastery of the English language is slipping away and her control over grammar is out the window, but she doesn't care. "Book signing. Four o' clock."

"What happened?"

"We… we talked." She swallows again. When it's clear that no more information is forthcoming, Lanie presses, "And?"

"And…" And then the tears are back, and she's not even bothering to try to stop them because she knows it's no use. There's no hope. "He doesn't want to see me, Lanie," she chokes. "Not – not ever." Another round of strangled sobbing overtakes her; Lanie wraps her arms around her and holds her through it. For several minutes, Kate stands there, trying to suppress the awful noises, trying to pull herself back to reality because floating in space with only her best friend as a tether isn't a place she wants to be. Finally, she regains control of her body, and says, "He – he _hates _me, Lanie."

"Kate Beckett, he does not hate you," Lanie says strongly, pulling away.

Kate shakes her head. "You weren't there," she tells her. "You didn't hear him."

"I don't need to," Lanie insists. "Kate, that boy was head over heels in love with you for four years. Something like that doesn't just go away."

"He's had three years to get over it."

"He's had three years to dwell on the fact that he's angry with you for something you can't help," Lanie corrects. When Kate continues shaking her head, she changes tactics, saying, "Did I ever tell you that you and Castle were the reason Javi and I finally got over ourselves and gave it another shot?"

"No," Kate replies, rubbing her eyes. "Why? We were idiots." She pauses, considers her statement, revises it. "We are idiots."

"Exactly," Lanie agrees. "We saw what you could've had, but were too stupid to reach out and grab. We knew if we were anything like the two of you, we wouldn't be able to just move on. So we tried again." When Kate doesn't reply, she says, "Look. What're you going to do?"

"What can I do?" Kate says miserably. "Like you said, I can't move on. And he has, he doesn't want to see me –"

"Kate, have you been listening to me?" Lanie asks, exasperated. "He. Wants. To. See. You. He's just too stubborn and angry to admit it."

No response. But Kate's starting to think that maybe Lanie's on to something.

"If you let him go now," Lanie continues, "you could lose him forever. Is that what you want?"

It's not rhetorical – it's an honest question. Lanie knows Kate well enough to know that there is a distinct possibility that she wants nothing more than to put Richard Castle in the past and move on.

_Is that what I want?_

It's the question she's been asking herself all day, all week, all month, all three years since he left. She's never really known what to say to it. She's never really known what she wanted. But now that the words hang in the air, spoken in Lanie's voice, now that they're more than just thoughts in her mind, the answer comes as naturally as breathing.

_No._

She shakes her head fervently, and Lanie nods. "Then you have to do something."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, Kate, you're the detective. Track him down again. Tell him how you feel. Better yet, shove him up against a wall and _show _him how you feel. You'll figure something out. Just don't let him get away."

-0-0-0-

By eight o' clock, Castle feels he knows everything there is to know about his distraction.

Her full name is Brianna Chloe Walker. She was adopted – she has never met her birth parents and has never wanted to. She's thirty-two years old, and strangely, this basic piece of information is the one thing that Castle has to ask her about specifically. Even more strangely, she seems to have to think about it for a few seconds before she tells him.

"I don't consider my age to be of much importance," she tells him. "In my opinion, what you choose to do with your life, how you choose to do it, and who you choose to do it with is far more important than how many years you've had so far to do it in."

She's a professional violinist in a traveling symphony orchestra, a job which she calls "less like work and more like a hobby, only you get paid." Other than the violin, she plays the guitar, the cello, and a little bit of piano. Not counting the recorder, which she had to learn to play in school, she didn't start learning to play musical instruments until the age of sixteen; until then, her lifelong dream had been to become a professional dancer.

"I was obsessed with dancing," she says. "In my spare time, if I wasn't at a dance lesson, I was dancing around my room, and don't even get me started on the number of times I've seen Billy Elliot."

Her words trigger a memory of a similar statement, made years ago by someone entirely different – _"If I wasn't dancing, I was thinking about dancing." _

"I have a friend who wanted to be a dancer." The words tumble from his lips without his permission.

"Really?" Brianna tips her head to the side. "Who?"

Damn. He should've seen this coming. He should've never brought it up. He shouldn't have opened this can of worms. But it's done now, and he can't exactly tell her that he doesn't want to talk about it. It's not that he has any issue with Lanie. But talk of Lanie will, inevitably, lead to talk of –

"Mr. Castle!"

He looks up, grateful – for an instant – that he's been saved from telling Brianna about Lanie. But then he sees who he's talking to and his heart drops.

He realizes now what a bad idea it was to bring Brianna to Q3.

Madison Queller is standing there, bright blond curls and all, a brilliant smile on her face. And, of course, he can't look at her without summoning an onslaught of memories and thoughts of Kate. He only knows Maddie in the context of Kate – she does not exist outside of her.

"I didn't realize you were back in town," she says, a little too casually.

Has she been talking to Kate? Does she know what's going on? "That makes one of you," Castle replies, letting his voice take on the same overly-casual tone as hers.

Maddie's laugh seems a little bit forced. "So," she begins. "Have you talked to Becks?"

And here we go. "No," he tells her, deciding on the spot it would be better to lie.

She looks slightly disappointed, but she nods nonetheless. "Alright, then. And you are?" she adds, now addressing Brianna.

"Brianna," she replies quickly. "Walker. Brianna Walker."

"Ah." Maddie's gaze flickers between the two of them. "Are you two…"

"Friends," Brianna supplies quickly. "Acquaintances, really."

"Okay." Maddie smiles winningly. "So, while I'm here, is there anything you two need?"

Castle remains silent; Brianna's gaze flickers from Maddie to her almost full glass of chardonnay to the half-eaten seasoned steak and remains of baked potato on her plate and back to Maddie, and she says, "No, I think we're fine."

"Okay, then. I'll see you, Castle." And she turns and walks away, her heels clacking unnecessarily loudly against the ground.

"Rick, who's she?" Brianna asks once she's out of earshot.

"Maddie Queller," Castle replies. "She runs Q3."

"You know her?"

"Yeah." He pauses, trying to figure out how to sum up his nonexistent relationship with Maddie in words. "She's… an old friend of an old friend."

"Alright." There's a pause that lasts several minutes. Castle doesn't do much, but Brianna eats several more bites of steak and sips her wine. Finally, she says, "So, you were saying, about that friend of yours. The one who wanted to become a dancer?"

"Oh. Right." And they're back again, having been distracted by Maddie but eventually coming full circle nonetheless. "Her name's Lanie. She's, ah… hard to describe. Interesting. Not unlike you, actually. You two would probably be good friends."

"Cool." Brianna nods. "Do you see her much?"

"No, ah… not really. Not since I left."

"Why not?"

"I kind of… fell out of contact with a lot of people when I moved away," he explains.

"Alright, then." Again with that word. "So, did she become a dancer?"

"No, she – she's an ME, actually."

"Medical Examiner?" Brianna sounds genuinely interested. "Cool. Oh, right, because you worked with the NYPD, with Detective Beckett."

And there it is. The name he had hoped would never come out of his distraction's mouth.

She seems to interpret his silence as irritation, because she quickly says, "I'm sorry. I don't want to seem like some sort of stalker fan. Because I'm not. I mean, I am a fan, but not…" She trails off, apparently giving up on even trying to turn what she was saying into a coherent sentence.

"It's okay," he tells her. "It's not that."

They're both silent for what seems like an eternity. They're silent until the lack of sound is so great, so all-consuming, it's tangible, and it's pressing in on him from all sides, crushing him. They're silent until he can't take it any long.

"So, tell me – what made you want to become a musician rather than a dancer?"


	13. Waiting For Her

_Don't know what day it is, I had to check the paper, I don't know the city, but it isn't home_

_-All This Time, OneRepublic_

-0-0-0-

The first time Gina yelled at him, he was terrified.

She's like that when she's angry. Terrifying. Under normal circumstances, if forced to choose between fighting off a hoard of hungry zombies and dealing with a pissed off Gina, he would choose the zombies. That first time, it seemed like she was never going to forgive him.

Now, he can't even remember what she was mad at him about.

She's like that now. So mad that he ditched the party to go to dinner with a girl he'd just met. But he doesn't regret it. Brianna… she's fun. She's entertaining. She's intelligent. She's charismatic. She's open. She's honest. She's loveable.

She's distracting.

Maybe the fact that he hasn't actually fallen for her yet is a sign that he hasn't quite managed to get over someone else.

She's nothing like Jacinda, nothing like the girls Rick Castle would've gone for before he met Kate Beckett. But these days… she is exactly his type. Except for one thing.

She's uncomplicated.

It's part of what draws him to her, but it's also what's pushing him away. He needs the secrets, the lies, the tension, the subtext. He needs the words beneath the words, the exchanges spoken in nothing but the language of their eyes. He needs the double meanings, the dropped hints. He needs something beneath the surface. Brianna… everything she is, she shouts from the rooftops. What you see is exactly what you get. He needs more than that. He needs…

…mystery.

After perhaps fifteen minutes of continuous ranting, Gina decides to forgive him for his absence, on the condition that he shows up for every book signing, every party, every whatever the heck she has planned for him for the rest of the weekend. And he has to have a first draft for her in the next two weeks.

That part daunts him a little, but not so much as yesterday. He's already crafting a character in his mind, a character much more believable than Natalia Young. Much more real because, like Nikki Heat, she's based on a real person.

Chase, he's going to call her. Leonie Chase. A sweet blonde twenty-something. A CIA sleeper agent living in Moscow. At first glance, an open book, but with so much lying beneath the surface.

All the things he likes about Brianna. And all the things he hates about Kate.

A perfect blend. Exactly what he needs.

Exactly what he's never going to get.

Book signings. Release parties. A drink with the mayor. A text from Brianna – _**dinner 2night? I'll buy. **_A regretful refusal – _**sorry, can't skip 2 parties. **_Two nights spent in the hauntingly familiar atmosphere of his loft. Two days spent waiting for her to jump out at him again.

Everything blurs together. Almost to the point that he has to check the newspaper each morning for the date, to remind himself, _yes, that's how long I've been here, _and _yes, that's how much longer I have to endure this before I can go_ _home_.

He doesn't say anything personal to the hundreds of people whose books he signs. He is a machine, reciting the lines he's memorized and then moving on to the next task.

He doesn't enjoy the parties. He tries to smile for the cameras like the arrogant playboy he once was. He doesn't sign any girls' chests. He drinks a little more than he should and tries to drown the memory of her. It's difficult; every second spent at a party like this reminds him of the first time they met. How could it not?

-0-0-0-

"_I just wish someone would come up to me and say something different."_

_Alexis – young, sweet, studying at a party. Indifferent to his many woes. She never liked the image he projected, never liked the women he would bring home after he'd had one too many drinks. She isn't a fan of his fame. It makes her a spectacle – she isn't Alexis Castle. She's Richard Castle's daughter. He knows she doesn't like it. She knows he doesn't like it. Still, as much as she dislikes his celebrity status, she can never understand how he can manage to have so many complaints about it._

_He really isn't sure why he bothered ranting to her._

"_Mr. Castle?"_

_Another fan, obviously. Who else could it be? A woman's voice, asking for his attention at his own party. He's already pulling out his pen, asking, "Where would you like it?" when he sees her._

_For a second, he was frozen. She's beautiful. Beyond anything he's ever seen._

_Alexis's mother, Meredith, is beautiful. His second wife and publisher, Gina, she's beautiful, too. But neither can hold a candle to this woman. She's naturally gorgeous. With super-short brown hair, minimal makeup, casual clothes, and a serious expression that says 'don't mess with me', she's lovely without trying to be. She's… stunning. _

_She's extraordinary._

_And then he notices the police badge._

"_Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD," she tells him. Kate Beckett. The name to go along with the face. It rolls easily off the tongue, and he wants to try it out, but she's still talking. "We need to ask you a few questions about a murder that took place earlier today."_

_He's still frozen. Still stuck. Glued in place by the combination of her words and beauty. He can't say a word, can't move a muscle, until his daughter leans over his shoulder, pulling his pen from his grasp and saying, "That's new."_

_Yes, it is._

_New and extraordinary._

-0-0-0-

So many memories. He doesn't want to think about it.

But how could he not?

She's still extraordinary.

At one party on Saturday night, he picks up a copy of _Broken Heat _and opens to the dedication.

_To my beautiful daughter, of whom I could not be more proud._

Not to the extraordinary KB. None of his books had been to the extraordinary KB. Not since Frozen Heat.

His drink with the mayor is easier. Squeezed in between signings, it's a brief reprieve from the memories that have been attacking him since he got back to the city. The mayor is someone who he can look at without thinking of Kate. He can call up memories of late-night poker games and badly told punch lines of once-funny jokes. He does not have to associate him with Kate. For the most part. There are always emblems of his past mixed in there.

Why did he have to wear that damn cashmere coat?

Brianna texts him during a book signing on Sunday. He takes the chance of hiding his phone under the table and reading by the light cast by the screen. He wants to have dinner with her again. Aside from the encounter with Maddie, it was the perfect escape. She helps him to forget Kate, if only for a short while, and spending time with her will help him to develop the character of Leonie Chase. But as much as he wants to have dinner with Brianna, as much as he doesn't want to go to another party, he made a promise to Gina. And even after all these years, she still scares him a bit. So, feeling rather downcast, he refuses.

Her response is almost immediate: _**you're leaving NYC 2night, aren't you?**_

_**yes, **_he replies after a second.

Brianna's next message consists only of an email address – _**agentstrike779 . **_

Agent Strike 779. The number is easily explained when he thinks about it. Brianna's two favorite numbers, she told him on Friday, are 7 and 2, mostly because of her birthday – July 2nd, or 7/2. 779 is made up of two sevens – 77 – and then seven plus two – 9.

But the troubling part is not the numbers. It is the Agent Strike. She is a fan of his books – why else would she show up at a book signing of his? But knowing it and seeing it embodied in her email are two different things entirely. Agent Strike. Agent Clara Strike. It's painful to look at – at first, simply because it brings up memories of Sophia Turner, the inspiration for Clara Strike. The smart, savvy CIA agent. The KGB sleeper agent. The traitor. Dead after attempting to shoot him in the head.

But, of course, he can't think of Sophia without thinking of Kate. Kate, his second muse. Kate, who always distrusted Sophia, but whose wariness he pushed away because he thought he knew the traitor. Kate, who knelt next to him as Sophia held a gun against his head and very nearly pulled the trigger. Kate, who was right all along. So that only makes it worse.

It's not fair, but he can't help but hate Brianna a little bit for her unfortunate choice of email address.

_**that's my email, **_she texts – rather unnecessarily. Then: _**stay in touch, ok?**_

_**OK, **_he replies after a second. But then he has to stop because he's stolen just a few too many seconds to talk to his distraction and the next woman in line is glaring at him.

The time spent in his loft is simply surreal. In the seven months that Martha lived alone there, she did not make a single change in décor. And then she moved in with Louis, her latest boyfriend, but chose to keep the loft. He's asked her why twice, and she's given him two different answers – "For old time's sake," and, "Just in case."

Just in case what? Just in case she and Louis don't work out – that would make sense. But the words still bother him, as though they might have some sort of a double meaning.

He's alone in the loft, which just makes it even stranger. Alexis's school hasn't started up again yet, but she's staying with Martha for the last few weeks before it does, because she likes Louis and she doesn't like staying at the loft by herself. She drops by at lunchtime on Sunday, fills him in on how her life has been, but she only stays for about an hour before she has to leave to get to a babysitting gig.

She's changed, Alexis has. She's older, of course. Her clothes are more mature, more professional. She wears slightly heavier makeup. Her hair is shorter, falling just past her shoulders, dramatically layered. She's still the same person, still his baby girl. Just… different.

At any rate, it's bizarre. He keeps expecting a seventeen-year-old Alexis to come bounding down the stairs, declaring she was off to hang out with Paige, or his mother to emerge from her room and give him some cynical piece of advice on how to live his life, or Kate Beckett's face to appear on his phone's screen, announcing a murder that's taken place somewhere in the city. He's getting his old life and his new one confused and it's all the fault of this stupid apartment.

During the day, he spends every spare moment glancing over his shoulder, expecting to see her staring at him. He waits for Esposito and Ryan to approach him with plans for a video game night, for Lanie to appear with her bright pink gloves, ready to do an autopsy, for Gates to watch his behavior, searching for an excuse to get him out of her precinct. Not that she needs one. He left on his own.

Most of all, he waits for her.

He waits for her to call him with a report on a body. He waits for her to take the second coffee cup from his hand and sip the liquid inside (to this day, he has trouble walking into a coffee shop and not ordering a grande skim latte with two pumps sugar-free vanilla). He waits for her to make fun of him for his outlandish conspiracy theories. He waits for her to jump out at him like she did at The Regulator, to bare her soul and pour out words of desperation, of need, to beg for something he's determined never to let happen.

Isn't that what he's always done, though? Wait for her?

He waits for her. That's what he does.

He waits for her, and nothing happens.


	14. The Easiest Thing in the World

_I'm stupid, you're smarter, I'm stupid, thinking there's a way this could turn out right_

_-I'm Stupid, Ana Johnsson_

-0-0-0-

"He told you that?"

"Yes."

"He actually_ told you _he didn't love you? He said he wasn't in love with you anymore?"

Kate frowns. "Not in so many words. Actually, in quite a few more words, but that's not the point."

Ryan shakes his head, tearing a small piece of bread off of the bun of his hamburger and tossing it onto the path ahead of him. For a second the two simply sit on the wooden park bench, watching as three pigeons squabble over the tiny bit of hamburger bun. Finally, Ryan says, "Kate, look. I know Castle, and –"

"Kevin, please."

"Just hear me out." He pauses for a few seconds, and when it's clear no further objections are forthcoming, he continues. "He was in love with you from the first case. That's four years he was with you every day. Four years he loved you. He can't just forget about that."

"You sound like Lanie," Kate groans, letting her head drop back. "When did you become a girl?"

"When I had a kid," Ryan replies grimly, and she can't help but laugh. This is why, after Lanie, he is the first person she goes to when she needs someone to talk to. He's like a brother to her, and like a brother, he knows exactly the right things to say to bring her out of the worst of moods. Lanie is encouraging; she lends Kate strength. Ryan is helpful in a different way; he lends her happiness.

"K-A-T-E!" Kate looks up at the cry; Ian Andrew has abandoned the sand castle he was trying to build on the playground and is barreling towards them. Before she has time to react, he runs straight into her legs – he almost topples backwards, but she manages to catch one of his tiny, chubby toddler hands in one of her larger, slimmer ones. He's out of breath, but as soon as he can, he says, "Kate. K-A-T-E. Kate."

"That's right," she agrees.

"Auntie Kate," he adds, pointing to her with the hand that she isn't grasping. "But I dunno how to spell Auntie."

"A-U-N-T-I-E," Kate provides.

"A-U-N-T-I-E," he repeats. "A-U-N… A-U-N-T-E… A-U-N-T-I-E!" Gloriously shrieking the spelled-out word over and over again at the top of his lungs, Ian turns and runs back towards the playground. He's still spelling out 'A-U-N-T-I-E' as he jumps into the sandbox and destroys his castle, stomping on it and running back and forth over the spot where it had stood until it's completely obliterated.

"You let him watch Godzilla, didn't you?" Kate asks Ryan without taking her eyes off the rampaging two-year-old.

"What? No," Ryan replies. "Jenny and I agreed – no monster movies until he's at least five."

Kate laughs; Ryan continues, "Superhero movies – that's a different story."

"Let me guess," she says. "Superman?" She can just see the little blonde toddler charging around the house in a bright red cape, with his arms held out in front of him like he's flying like Superman.

"He's actually more into the Incredible Hulk, surprisingly."

"And that doesn't count as a monster movie?"

"No way."

Kate laughs again – mostly because of a mental image she's just gotten, of Ian Andrew wreaking havoc in the sandbox while spelling out 'H-U-L-K S-M-A-S-H!'. Ryan joins in, and for a minute, the mood on the park bench is significantly lighter. Finally, he says, "Seriously, Kate. If he didn't tell you, plain and simple, that he doesn't love you anymore, then he still does."

"You think so?"

"I know so." He takes his eyes off his son, turning to look at her. She makes eye contact, smiles slightly, and lets him wrap his arms around her, pulling her into a side hug. She leans her head against his shoulder, letting his warmth and steadiness flow into her, providing her with the sort of courage that she never could have mustered on her own. Because that's what brothers are for.

It's moments like this that make her wish she had an actual sibling of her own.

He pulls away after a few seconds, forcing her to sit up, and brushes a few loose strands of hair out of her face. As he tucks them gently behind her ear, he says, "Now go. Don't let him get away again."

She nods agreement, whispering a soft "Thanks, Kev," as she stands and begins to walk back down the park path towards where she parked her car. But his voice brings her up short: "Hey, Kate?"

She stops, looks back at him over her shoulder. "Yeah?"

It takes him a minute to work out what he wants to say. "Just… don't do anything stupid, okay?"

At this, she can't help but smile. "Kevin, please. This is me we're talking about." And then she turns and walks away again, his shouted "That doesn't make me feel any better!" following her down the path. And as she walks she lets out a bubbling, musical laugh, not just because what he's said is funny, but because everything he said beforehand is right. Castle is not a quitter, and three years is not enough time for him to give up on her. She still has a chance. She can still get him back.

It's a beautiful thing, hope.

-0-0-0-

He isn't sad to be leaving.

One day, long ago, he couldn't think of anywhere he'd rather be than New York City. Now, he can't think of anywhere he wants to be less.

There are too many memories of her here. They plague him, assault him every second he spends here. If he stays too long he'll slowly go mad.

It's her fault. She's turned his favorite city against him. It's her fault.

He tells himself it's her fault.

He tells himself because it's easier to be angry with her than it is to open his mind to the millions of possibilities of other feelings.

He doesn't want to think about how he feels about her. He wants nothing more than to keep lying to himself – keep saying that it's over, keep saying that he's glad, keep saying that he's over her, keep saying that he doesn't miss her one bit. They're flimsy lies, easily seen through.

But it's impossible to see through even glass if one refuses to turn their eyes towards the windowpane.

No matter how transparent the forgeries of his mind may be, so long as he doesn't dig, so long as he steers clear of them, so long as he doesn't _think about it, _he's safe.

If he doesn't investigate, he'll never find anything.

But that doesn't always work. Because sometimes the evidence finds him.

Like with the man on the phone. The dark silhouette in the parking garage.

Like with her, at The Regulator Bookshop on Friday.

He can't always avoid the evidence.

But dammit, he can try.

Brianna comes to see him as he's about to leave. At first, all he sees is the waves of hair, the sexy, confident swagger in her step, and he's terrified. Terrified that it's Kate, terrified that he'll have to face a repeat of the scene when he first left three years ago. But as she gets closer he realizes it's not a trick of the light. It's not the sunlight glinting off brown locks – her hair is blonde. It's not Kate. It's Brianna.

It's not Nikki. It's Leonie.

He lets out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

He's out in front of his apartment, sitting in the driver's seat of his Ferrari, and she just walks right up, opens the shotgun door, and slides into the seat. The door is left open, and one of her sneaker-clad feet still hangs out, her toes barely touching the asphalt of the street. But her message is clear, even before she says it.

"Feel like taking me with you?"

"How'd you find me?" is all he can manage.

She raises an eyebrow, giving him an _are-you-serious_ look that reminds him a little too much of Kate. "Richard, please," she says. "You _are_ famous. And I _am _a fan."

"So you are a crazy stalker," he replies. "I knew it."

Brianna laughs. It's a high, clear, melodious sound, a beautiful noise that seems to embody the essence of happiness. It's a lot like her voice, really. It's one of those voices that you forget until you hear it again, and then you think, _oh, yes. Her voice has music._

It's not as beautiful as Kate's. But it's still nice.

"Look," he begins. "I'd really like to spend more time with you. But –"

She shuts him up with another laugh. "I'm kidding, Rick," she says lightly. "You're a writer. You need your space. And honestly, I'm just some chick you met two days ago and have only been on one date with."

"You're not just some chick."

"That's sweet of you," she tells him. "But really, I was kidding. I'm not expecting you to bring me back to your place so soon. Just…"

She trails off, unsure of what she wants to say. But when she makes up her mind, no more sounds comes out of her mouth. She's decided what she wants to tell him isn't something she can communicate with words.

Instead, she leans across and presses her lips lightly over his.

And at last, he's found something about her that he cannot relate to Kate. He has only shared one kiss with her, the one while they were undercover. That was passionate, desperate, needy. It embodied three years of sexual tension, three years of necessity. In it were all the words they could not say with their voices or even their eyes.

That was hot.

This… it's cautious. It's sweet and gentle, slow and soft. It's unsure, but so very sure at the same time. It's open. It's honest.

It's Brianna.

She stops kissing him after just a few seconds, pulls her mouth from his but does not move her face, so for a few seconds more the tips of their noses brush against each other, their top lips just barely touching, before she moves back.

She is so different from Kate. So very different from Kate. But isn't that what drew him to her?

Isn't that what he wants?

At the end of the kiss, he isn't sure if she's left him wanting more or not. He feels obligated to like her because he is supposed to be over Kate, and he feels obligated not to like her because he isn't sure if he actually is. He feels drawn to her because she is so different, so new, and he feels distant from her for the same reason.

All the reasons he could love her are all the same reasons he could not.

He's just an emotional wreck of a person like that.

"Just stay in touch," she tells him, already climbing out of the car and closing the door behind her. "And don't stay away for another three years." And then she's gone, her hair swinging from side to side as she turns and saunters away, leaving him extremely confused.

He'll just forget about her. That's what he'll do. He'll write Leonie Chase and then he'll forget about her. He'll forget about her to spare himself the agony of having to decide if he could ever love her or if he's just too jaded to ever love again.

He'll just forget about her. That's what he'll do.

It shouldn't be hard. Forgetting something is like losing it. And losing something is the easiest thing in the world.

Now all there is left to do is leave.

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**Please don't hate me for Brianna. I really do know what I'm doing. I promise, she won't last long. This is a Caskett fic, after all.**


	15. Proud

_So call me when you get here, tell me when you hit that ground, call me when you get here, tell me when your plan breaks down_

_-Losing Sleep, Parachute_

-0-0-0-

"_Agent Chase, down!"_

_The urgency in the voice was such that Leonie hit the ground without hesitation. The side of her head collided with the pavement. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a bullet rip through their suspect's shoulder. His gun fell from his hand as he pressed his palm to the wound, falling to his knees. As she lifted her head, someone stepped over her towards him – the person who'd shot him, the same person who'd yelled for her to get down. Short, layered dark brown hair, tight-fitting brown boots, jeans, and black leather jacket, blood dripping down her sharp-featured face from the gash on her forehead… Agent Dawson._

_She didn't say a word as she grabbed both of the man's hands and pulled them roughly behind his back, pulling her cuffs from her belt and fastening them around his wrists with unnecessary force. She used the cuffs to pull him to his feet, leading him back towards their car. She passing Leonie as she was standing up, brushing the dirt off of her clothing._

"_Dawson," she called – when she didn't respond, she tried the shortened form of her first name. "Jo."_

_Dawson looked back over her shoulder. "What do you want, Chase?"_

"_Just… thanks."_

_She shrugged. "It's my job," she told her, sounding as though she sorely wished it wasn't. "Where's Charles?"_

"_Keats?" Leonie frowned. "I'm not sure. Last time I saw him, he was at the warehouse, with Donovan."_

"_Donovan's incompetent," Dawson complained. "Alright," she added, shoving the man into Leonie's car and closing the door behind him. "You take care of this idiot. I'm going to go check up on them."_

It scares him, how easily the words flowed from his fingers, through the keyboard and onto the screen. Like they have a will of their own and are forcing their way out of his mind and into existence. He'd so easily created the character of Leonie Chase, the sleeper agent brought into action when terrorist activity at the Kremlin is blamed on the USA. Her team had been just as easy to develop. There's their leader, the surly Josephine Dawson; Agent Dawson's partner, the yin to her yang (though she was more yin and he more yang), Charles Keats; the techie, computer genius and expert hacker Jonah Tyler; the young, inexperienced, footloose, and rather reckless Sadie Donovan, the rookie agent; and, of course, Leonie herself.

Keats reminds him a little of himself – though, for sure, Dawson has very little in common with Beckett, or, for that matter, Nikki Heat. Sadie Donovan is not unlike Natalia Young, but Sadie is much deeper. She has more flair, more personality. And, of course, Leonie is a written replica of Brianna, the ink-and-paper twin of his blonde distraction. Though he's almost certain Brianna does not possess Leonie's epic ninja skills, which can only be related to Scarlet Johansson's Natasha Romanoff in Iron Man 2 and The Avengers.

Okay, maybe she's not quite as good as Natasha. But she's still pretty amazing.

As this thought crosses his mind, he can't help but chuckle, but as one song on the CD he's listening to ends and the next begins, the laugh dies in his throat.

It's not something he normally would've bought. Probably not something he ever would've bought. But Alexis gave the album to him for his most recent birthday, and after the first time he put it in his old CD player and hit the Play button, he found himself suffering from mild obsession. The band's called Parachute, the album Losing Sleep, and every track is a love song. And they're perfect. It's gotten to the point where he looks behind him as he walks, half-expecting to see a member of the band following him from a distance, waiting for inspiration for their next song, which another member does the same with Kate.

This song, the title song of the album, Losing Sleep, is his favorite on the CD.

And he hates it.

Every second, every lyric, every note. He hates it.

It's perfect. Too perfect.

He's not sure why he does this to himself, listening to this stupid album every freaking day. All it does is drag him closer to the life he's trying to leave behind. All it does is pull him back towards her. But try as he might, he can't stop.

All of the lyrics to all of the songs. They're too perfect.

_She is love, and she is all I need…_

_The scars that she hides with those stars in her eyes…_

_You can let this one go, you can try on your own, but I want you to be here…_

_You've got me living in a strange world, strange world, strange world…_

_When words meet heartbeats, baby, you'll know…_

_She's sick of this town, and the walls in this house, but her pride just won't let her see…_

Perfect. All of it. Every word. Perfect.

But this song especially. Losing Sleep especially.

And when it reaches the chorus, he stops writing. Because he can't write anymore. The easy flow of words has been cut off. He can't focus on Brianna and Leonie, not when his mind is so ensnared by Kate and Nikki.

_**And it goes down hard for me, that you just don't, don't seem to see…**_

Why couldn't she see? Why was she so blinded by her strength and her pride that she couldn't see what was right in front of her – namely, him? He was so obvious. Ryan and Esposito could see it. Lanie could see it. His mother and daughter could see it. Even Jim Beckett, who he barely knows, could see it. It was so obvious. He was practically waving his love for her right under her nose, but it's hard to see anything when you're covering your eyes with your hands. If she'd just opened her eyes and accepted what he was trying to show her, they could've had months. They could've had years. They could've had forever… though perhaps the more accurate word would be always. Instead, they had nothing. They have nothing. Because she was too stubborn, too proud, to let him love her. Because she was too much for him to handle.

_**From the top, you'll, you'll always be, looking down, to find yourself…**_

There was that word again – _always. _The word. Their word. How could one word, two syllables, six letters, hold so much meaning? How could it be so significant? How did it come to mean so much? When he thinks back on it, he's pretty sure he knows what he was trying to tell her. It was his way of saying 'I love you' without actually uttering the words. It was how he told her that he would be there for her, through good times and bad times – forever and always. He would never leave.

If he looks at it that way, 'always' was a lie.

_**So call me when you get here…**_

Call me, call me, call me. That was what she would do. She would call him. The sight of her face on the screen of his phone would always manage to lift his spirits, no matter how bad a mood he was in. At first, he thought it was because of the murders. The dead bodies she would call to tell him about. The interest of solving these cases, of shadowing Beckett, of doing something other than sit around all day and stare at his laptop screen, willing inspiration to come to him. But over the years he realized that that wasn't it. He wasn't waiting for her to call with news of a murder. He was waiting for her to call with something else. Something more personal.

But she never did. It was always 'dead body here, dead body there'. It was never anything more personal. And honestly, how much more impersonal can you get than someone else's corpse?

She never called just to talk. She never called to say, "Do you want to grab a burger?" She never called to say, "I need you to come over."

She never called to say, "I love you."

In the case with the sniper, after the failed attempt at the life of the would-be third victim, he'd heard her. She'd left him, run into an empty hallway without him and collapsed. He'd stood by the door, wondering what she could be doing. But he wasn't wondering for long.

Because he heard her. It took him a few seconds to place the sound, because it wasn't one he'd ever expected to hear.

It was Kate Beckett crying.

Intense, heaving, choked sobs. Heartbreaking sobs. The sort of sobs that racked a person's body, leaving them weak, fragile, broken, lying on the floor, trying to muster the strength to pick up the pieces of themselves.

It had taken everything he was not to go running in after her, not to gather her up in his arms and run his fingers through her hair and tell her that everything was going to be alright. Everything.

He still isn't sure why he didn't do it.

Maybe it was because he knew this was one of her rare moments of weakness, and she hated it when people saw her as anything other than the strong, tough, proud, fierce, intelligent, extraordinary homicide detective. Because that was her exterior, the image she projected, and she didn't like people questioning it.

But maybe if he had run to her, things would have worked out differently.

_**Tell me when you hit that ground…**_

This line, of course, summons up all sorts of awful imagery, of the two times Kate Beckett has 'hit the ground'. First, with a bullet in her chest. Toppling away from the podium, pushed sideways by him just a second too late. Her hat flying up off her head and rolling away when she hit the grass. Her eyes as she stared up at him from the green floor of the cemetery. The small glass tear as it fell from the corner of her eye and slid down the side of her face, disappearing into the grass.

And second, with a knife in her back. Crumpling of her own accord while he stood, frozen, unsure of what to do. And then he dropped to her side, kneeling next to her, his knees in the constantly growing pool of blood.

_**Call me when you get here…**_

A repeat of the same line…

_**Tell me when your plan breaks down…**_

But she didn't. All the times she broke down, and she never said a word to him. She broke down after her shooting, and she said less than words to him. She said a lie. The lie that pushed him away. That stupid, foolish, unnecessary falsehood. Honestly, how difficult was it to tell someone that you don't love them?

It can't be more difficult than keeping up a terrible lie for a seemingly indefinite period of time.

Did she ever intend to tell him? This is the question that haunts him every day and every sleepless night. Was she ever going to come clean of her own accord? Would she ever admit what she had done?

Maybe not. Maybe she was too proud for that.

Proud is a good word to describe Kate. Extraordinary, too. Remarkable. Maddening. Challenging. Frustrating.

Proud.

She thought she could take on the world. She thought she could move mountains, leap tall buildings in a single bound, run faster than a speeding bullet, carry all the weight of the world on her delicate shoulders. She thought she could beat the system. She thought she could get away with so much lying and cheating to the people who cared about her.

She was wrong.

He can't do this anymore. He pauses the CD, closes his laptop, gets up from his desk. He needs some space. He needs some air.

He leaves the torture chamber that his office has become and wanders through the elegantly rustic rooms of the house. Taking in the fuzzy carpets, the hardwood floors, the walls with their wood plating on the bottom half and off-white wallpaper on the top. The living room with its comfortable couches and big screen TV over the fireplace. The kitchen with its cluttered gray marble countertops, its overflowing cabinets, its messy island, its long bar with all the tall seats, strange hybrids of chairs and stools. The dining room with its big wooden table, its full bookshelves, its potted plants, its window into the kitchen above the bar.

He ends up on the front porch. It's a beautiful place to sit, really, with a hanging bench, wooden railings with the white paint just beginning to peel off, and a gorgeous view of the sea. That's where he looks – off to the right, towards the ocean. He loves watching the waves as they crash against the shore. It's chaotic, yet soothing, if that makes any sense.

And then he glances to the left, towards the street and the rest of the civilized world.

And immediately wishes he hadn't.

Because there she is. Looking so out of place in front of the backdrop of his Hamptons home.

Kate Beckett. In the flesh.

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**I do not own the band Parachute, nor the album Losing Sleep, nor the song Losing Sleep, nor any of the other songs whose lyrics I included in this chapter (namely, She is Love, Be Here, Strange World, and Words Meet Heartbeats). Nor do I own Castle. Though I do love all of the things I just mentioned.**


	16. When You Figure it Out

_Every hope in the world and those bright blue eyes, I'm still dancing along to the way it was_

_-American Secrets, Parachute_

-0-0-0-

"We have the worst timing in the world."

As he'd stepped down the stairs, off of his porch and onto the gravel ground, he'd thought he was hallucinating her. After all, how could she be here? He thought the stress of their awkward reunion, his upcoming deadline, and the significance of the music he'd just been listening had all mashed together and projected themselves in the form of her. A walking, talking, completely imaginary replica of Kate Beckett.

But if he were imagining her, he's pretty sure she wouldn't be talking about how awful their timing is.

"Did you know that?" she continues.

"I kind of figured," is his response, and he's shocked by how casual he sounds. Like he'd never left. Like they were meeting up at a crime scene, just like they always used to. Like nothing had ever happened.

"Yeah," she agrees, nodding, and he notices the difference between this speech and the one they'd had at his book signing on Saturday. Then, she came in with no idea what she was going to say. She babbled, telling him whatever came into her head in a desperate attempt to get him back. It was jumbled, discombobulated, honest. This… this is more like the Beckett he knew. It's calm, calculated, controlled. Every word is thought out before it is said. Every sentence is analyzed for weaknesses and faults, run through so many tests before she lets it go from her mind to reality.

Here, now, there is a wall.

"Five years ago," she continues, "you invited me to come stay with you for Memorial Day weekend. Here." She pauses as she looks around, her eyes flicking towards the beach, sweeping over the entirety of the large white house before moving back to him. "There was just one problem."

"You were with Detective Shlemming," he supplies.

One eyebrow shoots up. "Shlemming?"

"Demming," he amends.

"Right," she agrees. "Only then I wasn't."

"What?"

"I broke up with Tom," she explains. "Right after the case. Right before I came to talk to you. You remember."

"You told me to have a great summer," he says, confused.

"Right," she replies. "But that's not what I was going to say."

He frowns. "What were you going to say?" He shouldn't be asking. He should be pretending not to care. But she brought it up, and now he has to know.

"I wanted to come with you, Castle," she tells him. "I broke up with Tom to come with you. But then Gina shows up, and all of a sudden I'm not the one in the relationship that's getting in the way." On the name 'Gina', she puts as much contempt into her voice as she can muster. But he barely notices, because he's too focused on what she said next.

Getting in the way. The relationship that's getting in the way.

Getting in the way of what?

"Now I wish I'd talked faster," she says, once again looking up at the house. "This place is beautiful."

He doesn't respond.

"But you're probably glad I didn't come," she continues. "If I had, you wouldn't have been able to hide from me here. I would've found you in an instant."

"Seems like you found me anyways," he says neutrally.

"You led me straight here."

"You followed me?" For the first time in this conversation, he hears emotion in his voice. She followed him. She _followed _him.

He isn't sure exactly why, but that bothers him. A lot. Like a violation of his privacy, of what little trust and respect he has left for her.

No, wait. That isn't exactly right.

He doesn't respect her. She lied and cheated and broke all the rules. She chose her mother's death over her own life. She chose a stupid murder investigation over him. She'd rather die for her cause than live with her partner. That is not respectable. None of that is respectable. He does not respect her. Not at all.

But trust and respect are not the same thing.

He does not respect her. But does he still trust her?

_With my life, _is the first answer that comes to mind.

Yes. With his life, certainly. But with his heart?

Doubtful.

She still hasn't responded, but her silence and the way her gaze drops to the ground, he can tell he's not exactly right.

"No," he says softly. "You followed me – but that's not how you found me. Is it?"

There's a long silence – then, a whispered, "No."

"You found me years ago," he murmurs.

"Right after you left."

He shakes his head, baffled. What is wrong with this woman that she pushes him away, searches for him as though to beg him to come back, but waits three years before using the best weapon in her arsenal? What goes on inside her head?

It's a question he's been asking himself since he met her. But now he wants to know the answer for an entirely different reason.

"Kate, why didn't you come?"

She looks up, a trace of a wry smile on her face. "Would you have wanted me to?"

The answers _'yes' _and _'no' _pop into his head at exactly the same moment, and he honestly has no idea which one is real and which is not. Or maybe they're both true, just on different levels. God, he's just as screwed up as she is.

"That's what I thought," she says, apparently interpreting his silence as a 'no'. Good. Let her think that. It makes it easier for him – the pressure of having to decide is no longer weighing down on him.

There's a silence that seems to last an eternity. Then, finally, she speaks again.

"Do you miss it?"

He's startled. In the context of their conversation at The Regulator, this question would seem strangely reserved. Now, when he's talking to the normal Kate Beckett rather than the real one, when every word he says and every word she says has to get through her wall, it's surprisingly open. He was not expecting her to be so forward.

"What?"

"The city," she clarifies. "Do you miss it?"

Oh. The city. That makes more sense. "Sometimes," he replies, kicking a pebble and sending it tumbling down the hill.

"What about us?" she presses. "Do you ever miss that?"

That he is not expecting. That is not like her.

"There was no 'us', Kate." It doesn't take him any time to come up with the response – it's there, ready, the second he needs it, falling off his tongue, easy as breathing. "You made that clear."

"No," she insists, shaking her head. "You're making it sound like I wanted you to leave. I didn't, Castle. I never wanted that. I wanted you… I _needed_ you to stay."

"But you didn't need it enough to back down," he says. "It wasn't enough to get you to stop. Not that I'm surprised, really. That's the way you work, isn't it?" He shakes his head, giving a cynical laugh that's meant to hurt her. "It's never enough for you. Nothing is."

"Castle –"

"I loved you, Kate," he continues, cutting her off. "I told you so. That should've been enough, but it wasn't."

"I told you how I felt," she cries.

"When I was about to leave!" he replies. "Just to get me to stay. You had to say something, so you did. You didn't mean it. You were under pressure."

"And you weren't?" she exclaims. "Castle, you told me you loved me while I was lying on the ground, bleeding to death, because you thought it was the last chance you'd ever have to say something like that to me. How was I supposed to respond to that?"

"I don't know, Kate. But you sure as hell weren't supposed to lie."

She falls silent, her retort dying before it reaches her lips. He's right, of course. He's completely right.

"That's the easy way out," he continues. "It's the cheater's way out. Cheaters never win, Kate. Never. And that's exactly why all this happened. Because you lost, Kate." A pause. "You lost me."

Her walls are coming down – he can tell. They're getting closer and closer to what their conversation in the back room of The Regulator was like, and he isn't sure whether that's something he wants or not.

"What if I backed down?" she asks, finally. "What if, if you came back, I promised to leave my mother's case alone?"

"Could you?" he asks. "Could you leave it alone, after all of this? Are you even capable of that?"

She's silent again. Because he's right again. Because she doesn't know if she even can stop. Because she's not in control anymore. The investigation has taken over and she doesn't know if she could stop even if she wanted to.

"I could try," she says softly, barely more than a whisper.

Through the entire conversation, they've spoken from a distance. Several yards apart. But now, with her head ducked and her eyes gently closed, she hears his footsteps against the gravel, and when she opens her eyes he's right in front of her. She lifts her head slightly as he gathers up the strands of brown hair that have fallen in front of her face and brushes them aside. So that nothing is between his eyes and hers, and the light blue can find and stare deeply into the hazel.

And, of course, he sees right through her. He sees everything she has to hide.

"Kate," he begins quietly. "Since I left… how many times have you almost died?"

It's not a question she can avoid. She can't respond with silence. She has no choice but to answer, no choice but to tell the truth, no choice but to shamefully murmur the awful number just loud enough for him to hear.

"Fourteen."

"Fourteen?" He's appalled. "This is what I tried to tell you! This is what I was saying! They're not going to stop, Kate, not until you're dead, and luck won't save you forever –"

"I know!" she interrupts. "Castle, believe me, I know. And I wish I could tell you that you're right, and that I'm going to stop."

"But?"

"But I don't know," she chokes. "This investigation… it's awful, but it means so much to me."

"It's bad for you, Kate," he says. "It's hurting you. Even if it doesn't kill you, it's tearing you apart."

"I know," she whispers. "I know. But I'm out of control, Castle, and I don't know if I can stop. I don't know."

He nods, and for a beautiful instant, she thinks he understands. She thinks he's going to tell her that he's coming back, that he's going to help her, that everything will be alright. That they're in this together – always.

But he doesn't.

He just brushes the tip of his thumb against her cheek, softly, gently, lovingly. And then he takes a step back, pain in his eyes, saying, "Come back when you figure it out."

And then he's gone.

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**Holy crap, guys! Over 30,000 view on this fic? You all rock! And that's why you're getting this chapter, this confrontation you've all been waiting for, a day early. Think of it as my thank-you present to you all for the crazy support I've received. I couldn't ask for a better group of readers.**


	17. Sunlight

_You told the truth, I lived a lie, there's nothing I won't sacrifice_

_-Exception, Ana Johnsson_

-0-0-0-

"Come back when you figure it out."

"Yes."

"He said that. He told you to come back once you've figured it out."

"Yeah."

Lanie squeals, placing her glass of white wine back on her coffee table so she wouldn't spill it. "Honey, this is good!" she exclaims, pushing herself up off her couch and hurrying over to where her friend stood.

"Good?" Kate repeats, disbelief in her voice. "Lanie, how is this good?"

"He still cares about you, see?" she explains. "He doesn't hate you. Would he have told you to come back if he hated you?"

'No," she admits.

"Exactly," Lanie agrees.

"But, Lanie," Kate whispers. "How am I supposed to figure it out? How am I supposed to pull myself away from my mom's case, when I've been burying myself deeper and deeper in it for the past three years?"

"You can do it," Lanie insists. "You're strong enough."

"But –"

"No buts, girl," Lanie tells her. "If Javi and I can make it, you and Castle definitely can."

"You and Javi never had issues like Castle and I did."

"…That's probably true. But, honey, think about it –"

"Think about it?" Kate puts her wine down on the counter next to her and pushes it away from her, pressing the heels of her hands into the sides of her head. "Lanie, it's all I think about."

"I know, honey," she murmurs sympathetically, placing a hand on her friend's shoulder and letting it run down her arm to her elbow and then up her forearm, until her hand reached Kate's. She pries it away from her head, carefully untangling her fingers from her hair, and holds it tightly. "You can do this," she says encouragingly. "I know you can."

"How?" Kate asks hoarsely.

"With help," Lanie replies. "I'm here for you. So's Javi, and Ryan, and your dad. We'll help you through this."

"But –"

"And," she continues, "with motivation."

"Motivation?" Kate asks blankly.

"Castle, honey," Lanie explains. "Castle. You want him back, don't you?"

A nod.

"Then think about that. He told you to come back once you've figured out how to stop digging. So figure it out, and then you'll get him back. Even if he's not here with you, he can still help you through this. Motivation."

A pause. Then:

"Think about it, honey. What won't you sacrifice to get him back?"

Nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

She's right. Of course she's right. That's what this is all about, isn't it? That's what her life has become. An endless power struggle between her mother's murder investigation and Castle. An internal battle as she tries to decide which is more important to her.

It's Castle. She's rooting for him now – he's more important. But the monster that is this investigation, this war, has been getting stronger and stronger in his absence, and even with her on his side, she's not sure if he can win.

She's not in control anymore. The monster is.

The Dragon is.

She wants to stop. She wants to stop for him.

He wants her to stop. Lanie wants her to stop. The boys want her to stop – even Javi, who was so supportive of her investigation during the Orlando Costas case, the case Castle left during. Everyone wants her to stop.

She wants to stop.

And that should be the most important thing, the final piece of the puzzle, the last straw that will pull her away from this case.

But she's so tangled up in death and lies she isn't sure she'll be able to pull herself free. The ropes that tie her to this investigation feel more like Devil's Snare, constantly wrapping themselves around her and dragging her deeper with a mind of their own. She's fighting, but they're winning.

Sunlight. That's it, isn't it? Devil's Snare hates sunlight.

She's so far into this dumb analogy that might as well continue.

Sunlight. The answer is sunlight. So what is sunlight for her?

The answer comes in an instant.

_Castle._

He is sunlight for her – of course he is. The trouble is, he isn't here. He isn't with her. He's distant, physically and emotionally, and he won't come back until she walks away from her mother's murder.

Can she free herself from the Devil's Snare with only the promise of sunlight to help her?

Of course she can.

She can because she has to.

-0-0-0-

"_He's not our guy."_

"_What?" Leonie's tone was appalled, and with good reason. "He tried to shoot me!"_

"_Oh, he's not innocent," Dawson replied, an unspoken 'obviously' clear in her tone of voice. "He's involved. But he's just a hired gun, just like Anders."_

"_You're sure about that?"_

"_Chase, the second I started threatening him, he talked. He's pathetic. No way is he anywhere near the top of this conspiracy."_

_Leonie nodded. "Did he tell you anything useful."_

"_Hell, yeah, he did." Sadie Donovan seemed to materialize beside them, her reddish-brown hair tugged back in a sloppy ponytail, an envelope clutched in her hand. There was a slight bounce in her step, no doubt intended to make up for the fact that – despite her high heels – she was almost six inches shorter than both Chase and Dawson._

"_Like what?" Leonie asked._

"_Like the fact that the people in charge have already left the country," Sadie replied. "And where they went."_

"_Where?" Leonie demanded, her heartbeat quickening at the prospect of a new lead and the idea of getting out of Moscow, where she couldn't shake the feeling that her every move was being watched._

_Grinning proudly, Sadie flipped open the top of the envelope and whipped out five plane tickets. Leonie squinted to read the destination inked in tiny letters on the thick paper, but it wasn't necessary; after a second, Sadie announced, "Pack your bags, Chasie. We're going to New York."_

The plot is unfolding rapidly before his eyes; he's been sucked into the world of these characters and he's having trouble pulling himself out. Good. He hasn't been this involved in his writing for three years.

He isn't sure why he's taking them to New York. One of the qualities required in an author, he knows, is the willingness to let the characters take control of the story and go wherever they might lead him. Leonie Chase and her team want to go to New York. So he's letting them.

He's got an entire storyline in his head now – and a title, _The Thrill of the Chase. _A race against time. In which Chase and her team end up with under 24 hours to catch the people behind the attack at the Kremlin before another bomb hits closer to home. He's rather pleased with it, and it's nothing if not thrilling to write - no pun intended.

Still, he saves the document and closes his laptop.

He can't leave it like this.

He's terrible at waiting. Always has been. Procrastinating, on the other hand – that he's good at. He's been putting off this reunion for three years. But now that it's happened, he can't wait any more. He can't hang on until she figures out a way to escape from the hell she's living in. Knowing her, it'll take far too long. Unless he's there.

He has to help her. To see her, to talk to her. At the very least, he needs to end things differently, leave them in a different place, a better place. A place that makes it clear that he's still waiting for her. A place that will give her the strength to move forward, and thus make it possible for him to return.

He's not over her. He's finally accepted that. Falling out of love is much harder than he'd expected.

It was so easy to fall out of love with Meredith when she left, and with Gina after her. So easy. But Kate is different. Kate is real.

He can't just lose her. No matter how much he wants to, he can't let her go.

So cursing himself every step of the way, he gets up, walks out of his office, heads into the kitchen, picks up his phone from where it's charging on the counter, pulls up his contacts, and calls Gina.

She picks up after a few rings, and he's talking before she has a chance to say hello.

"Hey, Gina. It's me."

"_Rick." _He can practically feel her disapproval. _"Aren't you supposed to be writing something?"_

"Technically, yes," he replies, "but don't worry. I've been writing since I got back and I'm making good progress."

"_Good. Something you needed?"_

"Right. Yeah." He sucks in a breath, contemplates how he's going to present this to her. In hindsight, he really should've thought through what he was going to say before he called her. "Look… I changed my mind."

"_About?"_

"The city," he says. "Being there this weekend reminded me that I've missed it. I kind of want to head back, live at my old loft for a little while. Maybe just a few weeks, until Alexis's college starts up again."

A pause. Then: _"Are you sure that's a good idea?"_

"Why?"

"_Well, for one thing, you were just there. It's Wednesday afternoon, Rick. Late Wednesday afternoon. You've only been home for three days."_

"I know that."

"_Second of all, you have a novel to write. Can you do that from New York City?"_

"I managed it pretty well for most of my life."

"_I suppose so. But there's also the fact that you've been scared as hell of that place for three years. What changed?"_

"A lot of things," he replies after a second, "none of which I have to talk to you about."

"_Alright, I get what you're trying to say. Go ahead. But Rick?"_

"Yeah?"

"_Don't get distracted."_

"Right." And then he hangs up.

_Don't get distracted. _Simple words, but with so much meaning behind them. Whatever else you may think about her, Gina is a pretty smart woman. She's not blind; she knows why he's going back. And she's not objecting. She's just giving him a cryptic warning and then backing away.

The three words remind him of one other thing he ought to do, and he opens his contacts again, scrolls down to the Ws, and finds Brianna Walker.

**couldn't stay away**, he texts. **heading back into NYC**

Her response is almost immediate: **already?**

**yup**, he replies, and then, **you free tonight?**

**not anymore**, she sends. **i'll pick the place this time**

**deal**, he texts.

**and u have to tell me a little about yourself. i can't talk the entire time again, i'll lose my voice**

At this, he can't help but laugh a little. He's going back for Kate. But Brianna… she could definitely be a good friend to have.

**alright, fine**, he replies. **pick you up 6?**

**i'll meet u at 6.**

So he shoves his phone into his pocket and heads into his room, picking up the two suitcases he hasn't yet unpacked. Good thing he's lazy – all he has to do now is load them into his car and leave. He doesn't want to waste another second.


	18. Paralyzed

_Yeah, they talk about her, she smiles like she's so tough, she says, "Hey, can you talk a little louder? I don't think my heart is broken enough."_

_-Paper Bag, Anna Nalick_

-0-0-0-

Life goes on.

That's it, isn't it? One of those truths that you've got to face, got to deal with, no matter how much you want not to.

Everything ends sooner or later.

But life… life goes on.

In the face of all those endings, the world somehow manages to keep on turning.

And that's why Kate Beckett rolls out of bed on Thursday morning, her loose pajamas crumpled around her thin form, imprints on her arms and legs from where the wrinkles in the sheets pressed against her skin.

When she went to sleep, the end of the comforter she sleeps under had been nicely tucked in at the foot of the bed. The sides had hung off the bed, nearly brushing the floor. Now, the thick blanket is a tangled heap in the center of the mattress, having been pulled out of its neat, tidy state as she thrashed in her sleep, assaulted by the nightmares of the day.

It's a pretty regular thing for her. She doesn't even really have to think about it anymore – she untangles, straightens out, and neatens the blankets of her bed every morning automatically. And on the rare occasion that she wakes up to find that she slept peacefully for once, that the comforter remains undisturbed, she stands there for a second after getting out of bed, staring at it, unsure of what she's supposed to do.

She does not remember what she dreamed about last night.

But she could probably guess.

So she tucks the blankets in again and stumbles into the kitchen, starting a pot of coffee. About a month after Castle left, she realized that her old coffeemaker had been malfunctioning for years. She'd never noticed before. So she'd gone out and bought herself a nice new one. She still likes to get something at Starbucks on the way to work, but in the meantime, she needs this homemade stuff to wake her up enough to get to the coffee shop.

As the coffee brews, she pulls a bowl out of the cabinet – or, rather, she pulls two bowls out, because the first one is too heavy for her shaking fingers. She drops it, and it tumbles towards the ground, shattering on the kitchen floor. She sweeps up all the pieces and leaves them in the dust tray on the counter, to be dealt with later.

She's more careful with the second bowl. She places it gently down on the table before returning to the kitchen for a spoon, a half-gallon of two percent milk, and a box of Raisin Bran. She eats in silence, mechanically shoveling cereal into her mouth with her eyes half-open.

By the time she finishes eating, the coffee's ready. So she brings her bowl into the kitchen and puts it in the sink, replaces the box of cereal in the pantry and the milk in the fridge, and pours herself a mug. As soon as she takes the first sip, she's more alert. A part of her thinks, _good _– now she can focus. Now she can think. But another part of her thinks, _bad. _Sure, she can focus. She can think.

But all she can focus on, all she can think about, is Castle.

The fact that she's drinking coffee does not help. She can barely touch the stuff without summoning an onslaught of memories of him. Of course, she could never function without it, so she suffers through the recollections. But she still does all she can to avoid them. She can no longer get her typical coffee order at Starbucks – a grande skim latte with two pumps of sugar-free vanilla. That's too much. All the times he brought that exact order to her… it doesn't taste like coffee anymore to her. It tastes like him. She's tried out different things, but she can't seem to find anything she likes as much.

So be it. Avoiding memories of him was always worth having to deal with slightly less desirable coffee.

Once she's finished half the mug, she puts it down and staggers back into her bedroom. She pulls off her pajamas and tosses them towards the laundry basket, but they end up in a heap on the floor. She doesn't care. She'll deal with them later.

And she puts on her outfit for the day. Boot-cut dark jeans. A tight-fitting button-up white shirt with three-quarter length sleeves. A brown leather jacket with lots of pockets and buttons and zippers. She forces a brush through her matted hair, trying to work out the angry snarls. Her hair is always tangled in the morning. But eventually she manages to get it looking acceptable. Still unsatisfied with the results, she hurries to her bathroom and quickly straightens it.

She brushes it again, but strangely, so that hair hangs all around her head – even in front of her face. From what she can see in the mirror through the gaps in the brown strands, she looks rather like Cousin It. Sighing, she grasps the hair that hangs in front of her face and pulls it back over the top of her head, fastening it at the back with a small barrette.

The look is familiar – she's worn it several times before, but it's not one of her standards. Still, it reminds her of something. She just can't quite put her finger on what.

She dabs on a bit of makeup, puts on socks, and hurries out to where her rapidly cooling coffee awaits. Hurriedly, she finishes it, placing the mug in the sink next to her cereal bowl. She'll do the dishes when she gets home. Then she grabs a pair of black high-heeled boots from beside the door, slides her feet into them, shoves her wallet deep into a pocket of her coat, clips her badge and gun to her belt, and heads out the door.

A glance at her father's watch reveals that she's already late; she'll have to skip Starbucks. It's not the worst thing that's happened recently. She can manage. Still, this slight breach in routine makes her feel a little… off. More off than she was already feeling, at any rate. She likes her routine – it's easy to fall back on it, to operate mindlessly, when the universe is tossing her around like a helpless ragdoll. It makes her feel more in control. Doing something differently feels like giving up control, letting herself lose.

She's overreacting. It's no big deal – just coffee.

Of course it's not just coffee. It'll never be 'just coffee' again.

Still, when she gets in her car, she drives right to the precinct, passing the coffee shop by. No need to get any later than she already is. The parking lot in front of the Twelfth is full, so she has to park across the street and walk. No big deal. No big deal.

She stood at the crosswalk, waiting for the light across the street to change from the red hand to the white 'walk'. She tapped her foot against the ground. She tried not to think too hard.

And when the light turns white, she begins walking across the street, looking from left to right the entire way.

And about halfway across, she stops.

Because on her left, there's a car approaching.

And it's not slowing down.

She can see the driver through the window. He's not panicked. He's not frantically trying to stop the car. He's just driving towards her, looking more determined than anything else.

She _recognizes _him.

He's tried to kill her many times before.

And he's not slowing down.

-0-0-0-

Richard Castle wakes up early.

Living in his loft is still strange, but less so now that he's here of his own free will. Now that he's here fully intending to find her. He's not paranoid that she's going to jump out at him anymore. It's still bizarre, though.

He'd arrived in the city just in time to meet Brianna at the address she'd texted him about half an hour earlier – a small fondue restaurant. She'd worn a strapless dress in dark red, belted above her hips, falling loosely to her knees, and a pair of black high heels. Her blonde curls were wrapped in a neat bun at the back of her head; she wore very little makeup, just a shimmer of silver on her eyelids and some gloss on her lips, and her only accessories were a bracelet of unpolished brown wooden beads that hung around her right wrist and a black leather clutch that held her wallet, cell phone, and lip gloss. She was… more than beautiful.

Once again, they'd talked for hours. He'd told her about writing the Derrick Storm series, about his writers' poker games, even a bit about shadowing Beckett (though he kept all tales impersonal for the latter). He'd told her of Leonie Chase, her team and her story. She laughed at any and all jokes, threw in a few stories of her own – including one hilarious anecdote about a time when her orchestra group played the music for a production of Wicked, and everything that could possibly go wrong at a dress rehearsal did go wrong at the dress rehearsal that lasted nearly a half an hour. And she spent the entire dinner helping him to navigate the menu – seeing as it was written entirely in Hindi, which he did not speak at all but which she was fluent in. "I have a great aunt who's Indian," she'd explained while coaching him on essential Indian food words. "And I spent a year abroad there in college."

He'd enjoyed dinner – the food was great, if a bit spicy, and Brianna was as entertaining as ever. Distracting, fun, open… she was the perfect escape.

At the end of the night, she'd asked if he wanted to meet up for lunch the next day. He'd politely declined – Wednesday evening had been for Brianna. But today, Thursday… is for Kate. So he pushed it off to Friday, agreeing to meet her for pizza at noon.

He gets up and out of the house quickly, taking a few minutes to get dressed and eat a quick breakfast before hurrying out the door. He's planning to go to the one place he knows he can find her – the precinct. He can't go to her apartment. It'd be too personal.

He stops at a Starbucks on the way.

He barely notices what he's doing until the pretty redhead behind the counter hands him not one cup of coffee, but two.

One for himself.

And the other…

A grande skim latte with two pumps of sugar-free vanilla.

"Good for you, Mr. Castle," the girl says as she passes him the coffee.

"Excuse me?"

She smiles, saying, "I've been working here since before I started college. Five years now. You used to come in every morning and order this." She nods to the coffees in her hands; he quickly takes them from her, taking a second to glance down at her nametag. She's Amy.

"It's been years," he says. "How do you remember that?"

"There was this girl who used to work here," Amy replied. "Maggie. She would flip out a little every time you came in. She was a bit of a fan."

"I don't remember that."

"Yes, well, she'd wait until after you'd left to freak out."

He smiles, and they're both silent for a second, until she says, "It's been three years since you were here. Longer since you came in and bought two cups of coffee. I can do the math, Mr. Castle." One of her eyebrows has disappeared into her orange bangs.

"Look –"

"Good luck," she says.

He isn't sure how he supposed to respond to the interruption. So he just nods and murmurs, "Thanks," and leaves.

The precinct is only a block away, and he'd rather not roll up in his Ferrari. It might attract a bit more attention than he really wants right now. So he walks.

He almost makes it, too.

But as he's about to step through the doors into the precinct, he glances over his shoulder, back at the street.

And there she is.

Maybe she was crossing the street. She must've been crossing the street. But she isn't doing much crossing now.

She's just standing there. Frozen. Paralyzed.

As a gray SUV speeds towards her.

She's not even trying to run.


	19. It's Enough

_Step one, you say "We need to talk," he walks, you say, "Sit down, it's just a talk."_

_-How to Save a Life, The Fray_

-0-0-0-

"Kate!"

It is not her name. It is not even a word. It's a primitive war cry, the verbal embodiment of fear and pain and all-consuming panic.

It's a noise he's only made three times before.

First, over the phone, just before her apartment burst into flames.

Second, as he charged towards her to push her out of the way, just before a bullet buried itself in her chest.

Third, while dropping to her side, just after a man pulled a knife from her back.

It's a noise that can only be made when her life is in danger.

It doesn't matter that it's been three years since he's been Richard Castle, her partner. It doesn't matter that it's been four years since he's done this. When she was stabbed, he didn't notice until it was too late – there was nothing he could do but kneel on the ground beside her and hold her until the ambulance arrived. He didn't have a chance to try to save her.

But he does now. So, without really thinking about it, without really consciously noticing what he's doing, he's charging towards her. And it's just like four years ago at Montgomery's funeral, and he has to get her out of the way in time. And it doesn't matter that he's putting his life in danger, because he knows that it doesn't matter if it's been three years or three minutes since he last spoke to her, smiled at her, held her. It doesn't matter, because if she dies, he'll die with her. No matter how long it's been, the same singular rule applies – he will not survive her death.

Time cannot change something like this.

That's what 'always' means.

He drops the coffees as he runs towards her; they plummet towards the ground and burst open on the pavement, steaming brown liquid flowing all over the black asphalt. He doesn't care. It's just coffee. This one time, this one moment, it's just coffee.

His body collides with hers, the force of the impact throwing her sideways and sending him flying after her. He hates watching her fall; her breath is audibly knocked out of her as she hits the ground, and the back of her head smacks against the pavement with a sound that makes him wince. Still, it's better than the alternative.

A split second later, he drops on top of her, the weight of his body pressing down on hers. Quickly, he rolls off, pushing himself up and looking down at her. She hasn't moved; her eyes are impossibly wide, and she's breathing heavily.

His yell of "Kate, are you alright?" is almost lost in the noise as the SUV roars past them both. But he's pretty sure he heard, because at the sound of his voice her eyes flicked over to him.

For the longest time, she doesn't say anything. But when she does speak, it's not the affirmation he's hoping for. It's a number, said in such a strained voice that he isn't sure he's heard right.

"Fifteen," she chokes.

"What?"

"Fifteen," she repeats, her voice a little bit stronger, holding out her hand. He takes it, pulling her up into a sitting position.

"Fifteen what?"

"Fifteen times they've almost killed me since you left," she explains. "Fifteen times I've cheated death. I should have a party."

"Kate, this isn't funny." Then the full meaning of her words hits him, and he pales. "That was _them? _How do you –"

"Driver," she replies, beginning to stand up. "I saw him. Cole Maddox. Sniper."

"That was the guy who _shot you?_" He's clearly appalled as he stands up to join her.

"And stabbed me," she adds as they begin to cross the street towards the precinct.

"And stabbed you!" Castle shakes his head. "You never found him," he states.

"No," she confirms. "He got away, and then Gates suspended me, and by the time I got back he was long gone."

"You were _suspended?_" He stops, sucks in a deep breath. "What else have I missed?"

"Ryan and Jenny have a son. Ian Andrew. Adorable kid. Lanie and Esposito are engaged." She sighs. "See, Castle, if you'd been around, you would know all this."

"Beckett, now is not the time to try to make me feel guilty."

"Why not?" They've reached the other side of the street; the doors of the 12th precinct are right in front of them, but they don't go in. "You're here, after all," Kate points out. "Clearly, something's changed. So what is it?"

"I –" Wow. He really should've thought through how he was going to do this a little more thoroughly. He has no idea what he's going to say. "I need to talk to you." And then he winces, because it's exactly what she said. Twice. Once right before he left, and once at the book signing. And both times he turned her down.

"What a coincidence." She clearly hasn't missed the repetition.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Okay? I'm sorry. I just – I can't leave it like this. I have to figure out… where we stand."

"We?" she asks. "I thought there was no 'us', Castle."

"Oh, my God, Kate, can we –" He stops, rephrases. "Look. You're angry. I'm angry. You're hurt. I'm hurt. But can we just… not do this right now? I just… I need to have an honest conversation with you. Just this once. One honest conversation. Is that too much to ask?"

"Now?" she says doubtfully.

"No, ah, not right now." Definitely not right now. He needs time to think about what he's going to say. "Lunch?" he suggests.

"I'm late," she replies. "Really late. Gates probably won't want to let me off for lunch. Not for long, at least. Is dinner okay?"

Is dinner okay, is dinner okay, is dinner okay.

Dinner.

_No, dinner is not okay, _a part of him wants to scream. There was a time when he would've jumped at the opportunity to go out to dinner with Kate Beckett. A time when he would've teased her the entire time, calling it a 'date', but in his mind, he would've been singing the praises of every deity he could think of.

But that was then. This is now. And like he said, he's angry. He's hurt. And he knows she is, too. The difference is, she's getting over it. He's dwelling on it, holding it against her, like some stupid child holding a stupid grudge. For crying out loud, he's building a wall.

"Yeah," he says after a second. "Yeah, dinner's fine."

She nods. "Pizza?"

"Original Famous or Famous Original?"

"Original Famous," she says. "Meet you at six?"

"Alright." A few years ago, he would have joyously declared, 'It's a date!' to which she would, of course, reply, 'It is not a date!' But he's not that same person anymore, so 'alright' will have to do.

"Okay. See you." She turns, begins walking towards the doors of the precinct. But just before she pushes through them, she glances back over her shoulder. He's walking away, back the way he came, and he's not looking back.

Of course he's not looking back. Why would he?

It's difficult. She has to take a second to remind herself that he's not in love with her anymore.

This could take some getting used to.

But before she turns her back and enters the precinct, before she has to go and be strong again, her gaze flicks inadvertently to the street where she'd just almost died – again.

And that's when she sees it.

They're lying there in the middle of the road, surrounded by pools of dark brown liquid. One of them was crushed flat when some car rolled over it (she can see the imprint of the tires); the other is relatively unharmed, but the lid, lying a few inches away, is bent out of shape.

But she's not interested in them specifically.

No, what she's interested in is the fact that there are two of them.

Two coffee cups. Two identical Starbucks coffee cups. Lying in the middle of the road. Where he dropped them when he ran to save her life.

Two coffee cups. Two.

It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean he's forgiven her. It doesn't mean he wants to be a part of her life again. It certainly doesn't mean he still loves her.

But it's enough to give her hope.

And that hope is what carries her through the doors of the precinct and into the elevator. That hope is what lifts her a few inches off the ground – metaphorically, of course. For a second, she thinks it must be some hope if it's strong enough to lift her when she's carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

And then she realizes that that's not the case. It's just a spark of hope, but it's enough, because she feels lighter than she has in three years. Since he left, she's felt like she weighed a million pounds, like all of her sorrows were heavy objects she had to carry and they were dragging her down towards the ground. But now, they're gone. Now, she could be floating on air.

It's a beautiful feeling, really. Hope.

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**As you've probably guessed, the events of Always (as they continued after Beckett recovered) went down a little differently than they did on the show. After Beckett returned to the precinct, she continued trying to hunt down Maddox; they found him, but instead of going in with Espo and no backup, Beckett chose to let the boys tell Gates what they were up to; Ryan and Espo went after Maddox with plenty of backup but he still got away; and Gates suspended Beckett. The big difference is, in this storyline, Beckett didn't resign.**

**Just felt like I ought to clarify that. **


	20. For the Sixteenth Time

_Nothing goes as planned_

_-In My Veins, Andrew Belle_

-0-0-0-

Danielle Lewis's body shows evidence of sexual activity in the hours prior to her death.

That's what Lanie had been about to tell Kate. Before she broke down in the middle of the morgue. Before anything resembling a wall inside her crumbled to dust.

She's rebuilding it. Slowly, but surely. It's taking everything she is, and she has to be careful not to build it too high. She doesn't want to block people out anymore. She doesn't want to push the ones she loves away. She's good at that, shutting people out, and the wall is the best weapon in her arsenal. But she doesn't want to fight anymore.

It's a war, this whole thing. Not just her mother's murder investigation. Everything. Everything about her is a battle and three years ago, there was no end in sight. Three years ago, she was afraid to stop fighting because fighting was all she'd ever done. Since her mother was killed, she's been a warrior, a soldier and nothing more. It was a life she'd fallen into so easily, so naturally, and she's been having trouble pulling herself out. She was afraid to stop fighting because she thought maybe fighting was all she knew how to do.

She couldn't speak. She couldn't love. She couldn't just be.

All she knew how to do was fight.

But since he left, she's proven to herself that this isn't true. She can do so much more than fight. She can be a supportive best friend, sensitive yet sensible, a shoulder to cry on and a much-needed push in the right direction. She can be like a sister to someone she loves like a brother. She can be an aunt and even a mother to a child that isn't hers. She can be a friend, a girlfriend, a fiancée, and maybe someday a wife. Her experiences these past few years have shown her that. Laughing with Lanie over glasses of wine at their 'girl's nights'. Growing closer to Kevin. Her short-lived engagement. Ian Andrew.

She can do more than fight.

She can do so much more than fight.

She can live.

"So we should check in with him. He seems to be the only thing like family she had, and maybe he can tell us what she was doing at the warehouse where she was killed… Beckett?"

"Hmm?" She looks up; until then, her gaze had been fixed on a spot on the floor near her left shoe, her hair falling in front of her face as her mind wanders to places far from the precinct around her. But now she turns her hear upward, glances around until she finds the speaker. Ryan, staring at her from where he stands in front of the murder board. He's put up Danielle Lewis's picture and has been scribbling notes, though he doesn't have much – the timeline is completely empty between 6 PM (Danielle leaves work) to 2 AM – 4 AM (kill zone). He's stopped in the middle of writing GSW, and all he has is the GS and a little dash that will become the W.

"Kate," he says. "You alright?"

"Yeah," she replies, her voice full of her trademark fake confidence. "Just… thinking." She places her palm on her forehead – upright, not horizontal, with her fingers tangling themselves in her hair – and moves it back over her scalp, pushing her hair back with it.

He nods, but she knows it isn't because he's fallen for her act. It's because he knows her well enough to know that she doesn't want to talk. Later on, when they're Kevin and Kate rather than Ryan and Beckett, if he asks again, and she tells him she's fine, he'll take her hand and tell her that he knows she's not. As a friend, he won't let her get away with this. But as a coworker, he will.

"You were saying?" she asks.

"Danielle's fiancée," he replies. "Christian Randall. Esposito's bringing him in – hopefully, he'll be able to fill in the gaps in our timeline."

"There do seem to be an awful lot of those."

"Yeah, I know. But Lanie says that Danielle had sex in the hours before her death, which means in all likelihood, Christian was with her at some point between the time when she left work and when she died."

"Yeah." She puts her palm on her forehead again, horizontally now, using it to support her head.

"Kate," he says, putting down his Expo marker and stepping towards her. "You look exhausted."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not." He's Kevin now, crouching in front of her, forcing her to look at him. "Have you slept?"

"What do you mean?"

"Since you saw him. All this week. Have you slept?"

For a minute, she doesn't answer. She just rubs her eyes, as though trying to banish the weariness that her drooping eyelids betray. Finally, she replies, "A little."

"A little? Kate." He shakes his head. "This isn't good for you. You need to deal with this, you need to… do something…"

"I know," she insists. "Kevin, I know. And I am. I'm working on it. I'm… I'm making progress."

"You need more than progress," he says grimly. "You need sleep."

"Kev –"

"Don't 'Kev' me. You know I'm right."

She doesn't respond. Because he's right. And he's right that she knows he's right.

"Take the day off," he instructs. "Get some rest. Take some time to think."

"The case –"

"Javi and I have it covered."

He's right. She knows he's right. He knows she knows he's right.

So after a second, she obliges.

She nods.

But as she's standing up, turning to leave, Ryan's phone rings. And she stops and listens and waits.

He doesn't say much, mostly the occasional "Yup," or "Uh-huh," and he finishes the conversation off after about a minute with a simple "Alright, I'll be right there."

"What was that about?" she asks as he replaces his phone in his pocket.

"Lanie," he replies simply. "She needs us… me at the morgue. She needs me at the morgue."

"Alright. Are you sure –"

"Absolutely," he interrupts. "Go home, Kate. Take a break. You need it."

"Right."

"Sleep."

"Yeah."

But as she's walking away, a thought seems to occur to him, and he calls after her. "Um, Kate?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I, uh…" He trails off for a second, and finally just asks, "Can I use your car?"

"My car?"

"Yeah." He's sheepish for a second, and then quickly launches into an explanation. "Because Jenny's is in the shop, and she borrowed mine to take Ian to the museum for the day, and Espo's got his –"

"Kevin, calm down!" she says. "Yeah, it's fine. I'll call a taxi. Or take a bus. Or something."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, positive."

"Thanks. I owe you one."

"Yeah, how many is that now…?"

"Not funny," he grumbles, but she can see his smile as he ducks his head.

"Whatever," she replies. "See you."

"See you."

And then she leaves. Through the elevator that was the scene of so many conversations. Out the doors she walked through with him a thousand times. Out onto the sidewalk where they spoke just twenty minutes earlier, right after he saved her life again.

She doesn't go back to her car. A part of her is glad Ryan asked to borrow it – she doesn't want to have to cross the street again to get to it. Call her paranoid, but it just feels wrong.

The coffee cups in the street are still there. No one's been willing to brave the traffic to retrieve the litter.

There's a bus stop just one block away. It's closer than the nearest subway station. So that's where she goes.

She doesn't have to wait for a bus. She's barely sat down when one's right there.

She and two other people board. An aging woman who seems to rely heavily on the wooden cane in her hand. A teenage boy with a baseball cap for a sports team she doesn't know. The woman slides into an empty seat, but the boy stands and holds onto a metal pole.

Kate finds a seat at the very back of the bus, somewhere where she can sit alone with her thoughts.

She has the entire day to herself now. She can do whatever she likes. She'll probably sleep for a while longer, like Ryan suggested. But then what?

She can't sit around all day and wait for dinner so she can see him. Sure, she'll need time to plan what she's going to say to him, how she's going to convince him to be a part of her life again. Hopefully he won't need to be convinced. But she can't know that for sure.

She knows as well as anyone that it's possible to fall out of love.

And that it's possible to think you've fallen in love when really you haven't at all.

It's a horrifying thought, but one that she has to face – it is entirely possible that he never loved her.

She doesn't believe it. She doesn't want to believe it. But it could be true.

But it's not.

But it could be.

No, she decides – it's far more likely that over the years he's lost whatever feelings he had for her than that he never really had any at all. Everything that he's said and done since the book signing on Saturday would indicate this.

But everything that she knows about the Richard Castle she spent four years of her life with says that he wouldn't – couldn't – give up on her so easily.

But who really knows? His sudden departure three years ago was proof that she did not know him as well as she thought.

He's changed, surely. It would be altogether unnatural if he hadn't.

The question is, how much?

She'll call him. That's what she'll do. She'll call him, just to hear his voice, and to tell him that she was wrong earlier, that lunch will work. She'll call him to reschedule, because she can't wait until dinnertime.

So she pulls out her phone and dials his number from memory. It's something she's done many times since he left. He never picked up, of course, but it was nice, hearing him on the voice mail. And it was a reassurance that he hadn't changed his number, that if he ever did come back to her, she'd be able to contact him just as easily as she had before all of this happened.

Every time she called, she was waiting for the automated message telling her that the number she was trying to reach was no longer in service.

But it never came.

Which is a lovely thing, because it means that now she can call him, and hopefully he'll pick up.

It's been ringing for a few seconds now, and he hasn't picked up. But she can't lose hope. He'll pick it up – she knows he will. She's sure, because his presence in the city means he's not as angry with her as he used to be. She's sure, because there's a remote possibility that maybe, just maybe, he still –

And then the world bursts into flames.

She doesn't really register what's happening. But one second she's sitting there, waiting for Castle to answer his phone, and the next she's flying through the air, a human torch, and every inch of her body is screaming and her mind is telling her that she cannot possibly survive this. All she can see is fire and red and the wreckage of the bus she's been flung from and the street as she collides with it. The world is fading in and out, and screams are echoing in her ears, and if she's in this much pain she surely must be dying. Again.

Dying again. For the sixteenth time.

A hundred feet away, a phone lying on the pavement lights up as the person on the other end answers the call.


	21. His Everything

_Between the lines of fear and blame, you begin to wonder why you came_

_-How to Save a Life, The Fray_

-0-0-0-

He's writing when she calls.

He's struggling now – after vowing to devote the day to Kate, he's having trouble transitioning back to Brianna. He likes Leonie Chase and her team, but he keeps finding himself slipping back towards Nikki Heat. It doesn't help that he's sent the team to New York, either.

_It was always the same for her when she arrived to meet the body…_

_It was always the same for her when she arrived to meet the body…_

_It was always the same for her…_

When his phone rings, he glances down to see who's calling.

And when his brain registers the face on the screen, he glances down again.

This isn't the first time since he left that she's called him. It isn't the first time that her face has appeared on the screen of his cell phone. And it isn't the first time that he's contemplated answering it.

But all the times before, he's calmly hit Ignore. He's let his anger make the decision for him.

Now, he's the one who sought her out, not the other way around. Now, he has no excuse.

So after a few rings, he picks up the phone and answers it.

"Beckett," he greets. "What's going on?"

But she doesn't reply.

He gives it a few seconds, and then asks again: "Beckett? Something wrong?"

Still no response. He's a bit concerned now – he doesn't think she'd call him and then not answer. She's not that childishly spiteful. "Kate?"

Nothing.

"Seriously, Kate. Answer me."

She doesn't.

"Kate!"

Silence.

So he hangs up and dials another number. As with Kate's number, he hasn't called this one in years – three years – but he remembers it as easily as if it were yesterday. He's barely lifted the phone to his ear when the person on the other end answers.

"_Ryan."_

"Ryan," he repeats.

There's a pause as the detective registers and recognizes the voice on the other end. Then, coldly, _"Castle. Do you need something?"_

"Help. Beckett's not answering her phone."

"_She's probably home, getting some sleep. Because she hasn't been, you know."_

He pauses. Sighs. Rises above. "Look, I know you're mad at me. It's be downright bizarre if you weren't. But this is serious."

"_Maybe she doesn't want to talk to you. I wouldn't blame her."_

"It's not that. She called me, but when I answered, she wasn't responding to anything I said."

Another pause. Because Ryan knows Beckett at least as well as Castle does, probably better, and he knows she wouldn't do that.

"I think something might be wrong," he says, rather unnecessarily.

"_You may be right," _Ryan agrees. _"Where are you?"_

"My loft. You?"

"_On my way to the morgue. I'm going to head over to her apartment."_

"What should I do?"

"_Meet me – oh, my God_…"

"Ryan, what is it?" He doesn't respond. "Ryan?"

"_Castle, get down here. Now." _He gives an address, a street, and hangs up.

So Castle shoves his phone into his pocket, closes his laptop, pulls on a pair of shoes and a coat, and hurries out the door.

Across the city, at the address he'd just given, Detective Kevin Ryan dials 9-1-1.

-0-0-0-

It's worse.

It's worse than the worst case scenario. It's worse than he could've possibly imagined. It's worse than the nightmares that have plagued him since she made the choice to pursue her mother's killers at all costs.

It's worse because it's real.

The wreckage of what must have once been a bus lies on its side in the middle of the street. The metal is mangled, bent, and flames lick at the entirety of it. Anyone left inside the thing will not have survived.

But many lie on the street, having been thrown from the vehicle as… as what? As it burst into flames for no apparent reason? There is no other broken car – it was not a crash. So then what happened?

Some of the people on the ground, like a small elderly woman, appear to be dead. Others seem to only be badly burned. Two, a teenage boy and a woman in very professional attire, are awake, having suffered only minor injuries, and are trying to get up as doctors and paramedics swarm around them. There are three ambulances, and each is filling up quickly with broken bodies of helpless victims.

And the entire thing is surrounded by a ring of terrified yet fascinated observers. Random people, gathered together when they stopped what they were doing to get a glimpse of what was going on. All look horrified, but not one is making a move to leave, to run away from the scene of the tragedy. They all stand there in shocked silence, paralyzed, unable to do anything but stare.

Near the ambulances, he can see Kevin Ryan, pushing his way through pedestrians and paramedics, flashing his badge so they'll let him by. Castle can't see his face, but the way he moves radiates urgency.

So he pushes through the crowds – most of the people move aside, recognizing the panic of someone who knows someone who was in the accident – moving frantically towards Ryan until he can see what they're both running towards.

He knew it. He knew the second he arrived. He knew the second he heard Ryan's voice on the phone, instructing him to get there as quickly as possible. If he's honest with himself, he probably knew when Kate didn't respond to him over the phone.

It's her.

Lying on a stretcher, being carried towards the ambulance by two paramedics. Completely still, absolutely helpless. Her eyes gently closed, dark eyelashes brushing against her cheekbones. Were it not for the barely discernible rise and fall of her chest, he would think her dead.

Her clothes are burnt, completely black, looking almost like they'll disintegrate into ashes any second. Her hair is the same, only some of it, at least six inches on the bottom, has transformed to the fine gray powder. Her hair. Her gorgeous, long, dark golden-brown hair, kept exactly the way it was when he last saw her for three full years in the hopes that he'd return and recognize her as the same woman he left behind. Gone. Brutally hacked off by the all-consuming flames.

He's struck by the same thought that occurred to him five years ago when her apartment exploded – her alter ego's name, Nikki Heat, seems rather ironic now.

But her clothes and hair don't matter when he looks at the real her. Burned. The real burned her. Burns, burns, burns. Burns all over her body, on her hands and her arms and her legs and everywhere. Blood, too, oozing out of scratches and cuts and gashes and sliding across her skin, leaving pale red trails to mark where they've been. Everywhere but her face. Her face is bruised, but mysteriously unaffected by the fire that clearly licked at every other surface of her body. It's perfectly, pristine, screaming at him from the stretcher. Like whatever set that bus aflame deliberately left her face untouched, so he could recognize her, so he would not have the weak, faint hope that the woman lying there is not actually Kate Beckett. So that he would be sure that the woman he's loved for seven years – for if this day has proved anything, it's that he's still very much in love with her – is once again on the edge of death. So that he would know that once again death has come for her, and once again he was unable to do anything about it. So that he would be positive that it is she who, once again, lies sleeping as death drags her down. So that he would fear that this time she will not awake.

Her face untouched. Her eyes closed. He cannot even have the simple pleasure of staring into their hazel depths. If she does not survive this, he will never again know their beautiful shade of green.

He can almost feel the memory of it slipping away now.

"Kate!" He's not aware of planning to speak – her name escapes his lips of its own accord, as though by calling for her he thinks he can force her to wake up. But the only person who notices it is Ryan; he turns, looking back over his shoulder at the writer running at him.

Ryan, the small part of his brain which is still living in reality notes, has not aged a day. He looks just as he did when Castle left, though his eyes seem to have a little more wisdom behind them. The result of parenting a small child, or simply a side effect of watching Kate almost die again and again and again?

Sixteen times now. Sixteen.

Who is that lucky?

"Sir." It's not Ryan who speaks, but one of the paramedics, a tall, lean African-American woman with a shaved head. Of course it's not Ryan. Why would Ryan call him 'sir'? Ryan's pissed at him. As he should be. "You need to step back."

"I need to get through." Why is this woman so stupid? So blind? Can't she see the necessity on his face, in his eyes? Can't she tell that she must let him through? Can't she understand that if he can't get to her, his entire world will dissolve until all that's left is the wall behind him, the floor underneath him, and the bottle in his hand?

"We've got this under control," she assures him, but all he hears is lies, lies, lies. "You need to back away."

"Don't you understand?" he babbles, pointing frantically past her to Kate on a stretcher. "That's my –"

That's his what? His friend? She's so much more and so much less than that. His girlfriend? As much as he wishes it, she'd kill him if he said that, not to mention that it's not true. The love of his life? Very much true, but not exactly right.

His everything.

That's what she is. She's his everything.

But he doesn't think this woman is going to let him through to see his 'everything'.

"That's my partner," he says. Let her take that whatever way she wants.

The woman opens her mouth to respond – to tell him to leave again, judging by her expression – but she's interrupted by a male voice.

"Let him through."

And he's there, holding up his badge before she has a chance to ask him why she should do what he says. And, looking rather flustered, she steps aside, letting Castle through to join the detective.

Thank God.

Thank God for Ryan.

"What happened?" Castle demands.

"Why are you here?" Ryan demands right back.

And he stops. The sudden question, seeming to come out of the blue, stops him in his tracks. And then he starts walking again, because no matter what Ryan says, he has to get to Kate.

"I'm here because you told me to come," he replies. "And because she's hurt." Understatement of the century.

"I know why you're here_,_" Ryan says. "I mean _here, _here_. _In the city. Here. Why'd you come back?"

And that floors him. Why did he come back?

Why is he here?

Maybe he's afraid if he steps away again, he'll lose her forever.

Maybe he's afraid to be without her.

Maybe he's finally realized that he was to blame for their harsh separation.

Maybe he's realized that both of them were.

Maybe, at long last, he's understood that if they are ever to move on, they both need to do their part.

Maybe he came back to do his.

Maybe he decided to start things off with a simple apology. And then his part will be done for the moment and it'll be her turn. And then he'll know if she really cares at all.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

"I needed to," is all he says.

"Okay," Ryan replies softly. Then, after a second, in a much stronger voice: "Get in the ambulance. Be with her. Esposito's on his way – we'll meet you at the hospital."

He's not going to fight him. Why would he?

"Alright."


	22. Like a Sister

_And I'd give up forever to touch you, 'cause I know that you'd feel me somehow_

_-Iris, The Goo Goo Dolls_

-0-0-0-

In seven years, he's ridden in an ambulance with her three times.

All three were unspeakably miserable.

But out of all three, he must admit that this one is the most bearable. The first time, he was sitting there, unable to help, broken, dwelling on his confession and wishing, wishing, wishing that he'd said something sooner, while Lanie fought to keep Kate's heart beating. The second time, Lanie was not with them. He was the only one there for her, which was both more and less awful. Her injury was entirely different, but once again, he was forced to sit idly by and do nothing while doctors and paramedics swarmed around her, hooking her up to various machines and shouting out phrases that meant nothing to him.

This time is different, though. It's different because for the first time, there is not chaos. This time, her heartbeat is slow and steady, just as it's supposed to be. This time, to use a phrase he heard one of the paramedics using, she's stable.

But still, the burns and bruises and bloody slashes on her body stare up at him, screaming, forcing him to realize that although her life is not in immediate danger, all is not well. She's in awful shape, and surely if she were awake she'd be in terrible pain.

A part of him wishes she were awake. He wants to see her, to talk to her, to grasp her hand and feel her fingers tighten around his in response. He wants to validate that she's really alive, because the beeping of the heart rate monitor and the gentle fluctuations of her chest are not reassurance enough.

But he knows that he shouldn't be wishing this. Because he knows that her injuries, while not life-threatening, are terribly severe, and he would not be able to stand the anguish that would surely define her face if she could feel the pain of those burns. He doesn't want her to suffer. So he's glad she's resting peacefully in an easy, thankfully temporary sleep.

He reaches for her hand, but as his fingers brush hers, the roughness of her burnt skin reminds him that he ought not to touch her there. So he moves his hand to her unharmed face and carefully brushes the backs of his fingers against her cheek. And still, he can't help wishing for a response, but she is torturously unmoving.

"Sir?"

He glances up; his eyes land on a small paramedic with a rounded face and strawberry-blond hair.

"What's your relationship with the victim?" she asks.

"Kate," he tells her, ignoring the question. "Her name is Kate." He doesn't want to hear her referred to as 'the victim'. It sounds wrong. Like she's dead.

"Kate," the paramedic agrees. "What's your relationship with her?"

"I'm an old friend," he replies after a second's thought. "A partner."

"A romantic partner?"

"What? No, work. We worked together."

By the way one eyebrow disappears into her softly curled bangs, he can tell she saw him caressing Kate's face. "You seem pretty close for coworkers," she says.

"In her profession, that's how it works. Partnership is the closest bond you can have." Just look at Espo and Ryan.

"And what profession would that be?"

Questions. He doesn't really want to answer questions. He doesn't even want to think about questions. There are too many questions in the world. Why is this woman asking so many questions? Wait, that's a question. Damn. "She's a cop," he replies reluctantly. "A homicide detective."

"Oh. Then you are, too? A detective?"

"Huh? No. I'm a writer."

"Oh." She's completely lost – he can tell by the puzzled expression that crosses her face. Clearly she isn't a Nikki Heat fan. "Alright, then," she adds finally, and – thankfully – walks away.

The rest of the ride passes uneventfully. No one else tries to talk to him. Kate doesn't stir. Her condition stays exactly the same. They reach the hospital in minutes, and Kate is pulled out of the ambulance and down the hallway on her stretcher. Castle doesn't even bother running after her. He just collapses in a chair, defeated, while the doctors wheel her away to do whatever it is they do to help burn patients. Operate? Perhaps. Perhaps not, though. Other than possibly a few broken bones, all of her injuries are on the surface. Right?

This is why he's a writer, not a doctor.

Dr. Motorcycle Boy would probably know. If they were on speaking terms, Castle might ask him. But they aren't. So he won't.

Now he wishes he'd run after her. Now he feels – well, not as alone as he's ever felt, but pretty damn close. He wishes Esposito and Ryan would hurry up and get there, no matter how pissed off they are at him. He wishes Alexis would come and huddle close to him like she would when she was younger, but she has no way of knowing what's going on, so why would she? Most of all, he wishes he were with Kate, wherever she is. He wishes he could sit by her side and touch her face and maybe hold her hands – they aren't nearly as badly burnt as her arms, anyways. Because it doesn't matter how deep a sleep she's fallen into. If he were to touch her, at the very least, he'd feel her. The softness of her skin and the warmth of her body would reassure him, help him to be grounded, tether him to this world just as she always used to.

And maybe, just maybe, on the off chance that three years apart haven't spoiled the beautiful connection they used to have, haven't reduced it to nothing more than one-sided attraction, unrequited love between two people who have nothing in common and whose differences are now what's driving them apart rather than what's binding them together… maybe she'd feel him, too. And maybe she'd know that it's alright, that he's here, that he loves her. That he's not giving up on her.

Just like old times.

It takes about twenty minutes for Ryan and Esposito to arrive. But it feels like longer.

They're both speedwalking, but as soon as they turn the corner, Esposito's pace quickens further as he charges towards Castle. For a second, he's sure he's going to try to shove him or something – which doesn't make much sense, seeing as he's sitting down – but Espo seems to get control of himself and stops a few feet away. "Where is she?"

"I don't know," Castle replies honestly. "Last I heard, she's stable."

"What happened?"

"No idea." He shrugs despondently. "Something with a bus. I mean, it looks like an accident, but… I don't know. It doesn't… feel like one."

Esposito snorts. "Oh, so you're a cop again now?"

"Espo –" Ryan begins, stepping forward.

"Ryan, back off." Esposito holds out a hand, as though to physically stop his partner from advancing further, but his words are enough. "What are you doing here?" he asks harshly.

"Bro," Ryan interrupts. "I already asked him –"

"I want to hear it from him."

Castle couldn't blame the detective for putting him on the spot like this. Still, with both partners' eyes fixed on him, he really wasn't enjoying it. "I don't know," he murmurs. "I – I needed to come back. I couldn't leave it… the way I did."

"Really?" Another snort. "You didn't seem to have that problem last time."

"Javi –"

"Back off, Kevin!" At his partner's exclamation, Ryan does take a few steps back. "Look," Esposito began. "I don't care who you are. I don't care how many damn best-sellers you've written or how many cases you've helped crack. I don't care what you meant to her. You can't just waltz back in here and expect everything to be okay."

"Javi, please," Ryan pleads, stepping forward again, desperate to be the mediator. "Leave him alone. She wouldn't want –"

"Whose side are you on?" Esposito demands.

"Kate's!" Ryan cries without missing a beat. "I'm on Kate's side, Javi! She's like my sister. I love her like a sister and I know you feel the same way. So yeah, if some jerk comes along and hurts her, we're allowed to be pissed. But this isn't just some jerk, this isn't Josh or Sorenson, this is _Castle. _And if she wants him back anyways, who are we to judge?"

There's a pause, a minute of silence, during which Esposito's gaze flicks back and forth between Castle and Ryan. Finally, he speaks. "You broke her heart," he says, softer than anything he's said to Castle today so far. "You hear me? You broke her damn heart."

"I know," Castle whispers. "Trust me, I know. And believe me when I say I wish I could take it all back. More than anything."

"Regret isn't enough." Esposito's voice is quickly regaining strength and surety. "You have to make it up to her. You have to… to heal her."

"I know," he says again. "I know. And… I think that's why I'm here. To heal her. Or, at least, to try."

"You'd better try." There's a hint of a threat in Esposito's tone. "Because you know us, bro." He takes a step back to stand beside Ryan, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "And you mess with our sister, there's gonna be hell to pay."

Yes, definitely a threat. He deserves it, though. He knows he does. Esposito and Ryan have no reason to trust him, no reason to believe he'll do what he says he's going to do. Not after everything that he's already done. He's betrayed them, shattered their trust, and it could take a while to build it back up. But hopefully he'll be able to do it. Because they're his bros. And he needs them in his life. Not nearly as much as he needs her, but still.

Things can't ever be the same as they were before he left. He knows that. Hell, he made sure of that three years ago.

But maybe, with some work, things can be close.

With some work… and with her.


	23. Unmoving Ghosts

_I'm lost in the hurt, I'm caught in the past_

_-Love How It Hurts, Scouting for Girls_

-0-0-0-

"_Honey, you have to do something."_

_Kate Beckett sits on her bed, a pillow propped upright to form a soft barrier between her back and the head of the bed, her legs tucked in close to her chest and her arms wrapped around them to keep them there, and her forehead resting on her knees. The blinds are closed; the only light comes from the lamp on the bedside table and the overhead light. Lanie Parish had turned both on, as though she thinks an excess of physical light might brighten her friend's mood. It isn't working._

_Lanie is the exact opposite of Kate in this moment. While Kate wears a loose blue pajama shirt and old gray sweatpants, Lanie is dressed in jeans and a crisp light pink button-up shirt. While Kate's hair falls in unbrushed brown tangles around her face, Lanie's has been washed, brushed, and carefully straightened. While Kate craves darkness and isolation from the world, Lanie insists on light and integration. While Kate is a ball on her mattress, Lanie paces the room – maybe she thinks that she can move enough for both of them if she tries hard enough._

_Lanie is collected and composed. Kate is a mess._

_And justly so. It hurts when your not-quite-lover leaves you without so much as a goodbye._

_A song springs into her mind, and a tiny smile dances on her lips as she hums out the tune, the lyrics playing along in her mind._

_**Goodbye, my almost lover, goodbye, my hopeless dream, I'm trying not to think about you…**_

"_Kate, what're you singing?"_

_Kate squeezes her eyes shut, the music dying in her throat at once. "Nothing," she whispers._

"_Good, you're communicating." Lanie stops pacing, sits down on the edge of the bed, tries to bend down so she can see Kate's face. Failing, she straightens. "Do you want to talk about it?"_

"_No."_

"_Then why'd you invite me over?"_

_No response._

"_Do you want to go see Dr. Burke?"_

"_I don't need a shrink, Lanie."_

"_He's helped you a lot in the past."_

"_That's the past." She lifts her face just slightly, just enough so that she can rub her eyes. "Unfortunately, this is the present."_

"_Exactly." Lanie grabs onto her friend's words, turning them around to use them to her benefit. "This is the present. You need to live in it. Alright?"_

"_Don't like the present. The past is better."_

_Lanie sighs. "Alright. Fine. Let's start small." A deep breath. "Kate, what do you want?"_

"_Is this a trick question?"_

"_Nope."_

_A sniff. "What do you think I want?"_

"_Kate."_

"_Fine." She looks up, making eye contact with her friend for just a few seconds before deciding against it and dropping her head again. "Castle. Okay? I want Castle. There. I said it. You happy?"_

"_Not really," Lanie admits grudgingly. Okay. She's no therapist, but she is Kate's best girlfriend, and she thinks she can handle this. "And… why do you want Castle?"_

_A long pause, an interlude of deep, smothering silence. When Kate finally replies, her voice is thick and choked, muffled by sobs that she's been holding captive inside of her but which have now managed to pull a miraculous Houdini and escape._

"_Because I'm in love with him!"_

_Lanie sucks in a breath. She already knew this, of course. It's always been ridiculously obvious, and besides, she's the best friend – it's her job to see right through Kate. But knowing it and hearing it admitted, said out loud, put out into the world, are two different things entirely._

_Apparently, the difference is just as shocking for Kate herself, because she stops for a minute, frozen by the realization that the truth of her words cannot be denied. It's a while before she continues, saying, "I love him, Lanie. Alright? I love him." She winces, because she's just remembered the last line of the chorus of the song she was humming - **should've known you'd bring me heartache, almost lovers always do. **_

"_Good," Lanie says after a second. "That's good. I mean, the honesty. Honesty is good." She pauses, takes a deep breath before continuing. "So… what're you going to do about that?"_

"_What can I do?"_

"_Well, for starters, tell him."_

"_I tried that." Kate sighs, seeming to go even limper than she already was. "He left anyways. You know what he said?" A choked, cynical laugh. "He said 'I don't think your idea of love is the same as mine'." _

"_Oh. Wow." Lanie frowns. "He's pissed."_

"_Figured that out, did you?"_

"_He's been pissed at you before, Kate."_

"_Never like this."_

"_No, I guess not. But still, that doesn't change the fact that he loves you, honey, just as much as you love him."_

_Kate presses the heels of her hands against her temples, as though she's determined to give herself a headache. "I know," she whispers. "He t- but it doesn't matter at this point, does it, because he –"_

"_Hold up." Lanie lifts both hands in a T, the universal signal for time-out. "Slow down. He told you? When?"_

_Kate sighs. Damn. She doesn't want to talk about this, not now, not under these circumstances, but she doesn't have much of a choice now, does she?_

"_When I was shot," she admits reluctantly. "When I was on the ground and he was talking to me. He told me he loved me."_

"_I thought you didn't remember. You told us you didn't remember."_

"_Yeah, I did." She runs a hand back through her tangled hair. "But… I did."_

"_Girl, speak English."_

"_I lied. Okay?" She drops her head back onto her legs, wincing slightly as her hard forehead collides with the bony surface of her knees. "I lied. I remembered. I always remembered."_

_Lanie shakes her head sadly. "Why?"_

"_Because… because of Castle," she murmurs. "Because I knew that if he knew that I heard him, I'd either have to tell him I didn't feel the same, which would be a lie, and it would hurt him, and I didn't want to do that, or I'd have to tell him the truth, in which case he'd want to start something right away, and I wasn't ready for that. I needed…"_

"_Time," Lanie finishes. She sighs, and shakes her head again. "Honey, he would've waited for you. The way he loves you? He would've waited as long as you needed."_

"_Maybe." She sighs. "I don't know, Lanie. I was stupid. I am stupid. I think, when it comes to him, I always have been and always will be stupid."_

"_Probably."_

"_Thanks for the vote of encouragement."_

"_Hey, you said it, not me."_

_Kate snorts, letting her faint feeling of amusement take hold of her for an instant. It's nice. For a second, she feels grounded, more like herself, before she drops back into darkness again._

"_Going back to my question," Lanie continues. "What are you going to do?"_

"_I don't know. You're the hopeless romantic, not me."_

"_Girl, please."_

"_You are!"_

_Both women are silent for a minute; finally, Lanie says, "Well, you can't just let him get away. Right?"_

"_I don't know," Kate mutters. "I don't think so."_

"_Let's a have a little certainty here."_

"_Okay, fine. No."_

"_No, what?"_

"_No, I can't just let him get away. Get to the point, Lanie."_

"_Okay, okay." Lanie puts her hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. "Well, first of all, you need to figure out where he went."_

"_How?"_

"_Honey, you're a freaking homicide detective. He can't hide from you."_

"_Fair point." Kate takes a deep breath. "So, I find him. Then what?"_

"_That, my friend, is up to you." Lanie stands, skimming her hands down her sides and letting them drop when she reaches her hips. "You're the one in love here, not me. Figure something out. You've got time."_

"_But what if he doesn't want to come back?"_

"_Keep trying," Lanie insists. "I know you, Kate, and if this is important to you – and I think it is – you won't let it go. Even if you can't convince him to be a part of the team again, maybe you can at least get him to be a part of your life."_

"_Alright." Kate sighs, nods, and sits up. Lanie seems to consider her work done, and turns and begins to leave._

"Wait."

_Lanie doesn't stop. _

"Lanie, hold up."

_She just keeps walking towards the door, like Kate isn't even talking._

"Lanie! Haven't we had this conversation before?"

_Still no response. And then she's gone, out the bedroom door. _Kate jumps up, running after her, but something makes her glance back towards the bed, and she almost screams.

There she is. _Sitting there. Finally sitting up. Her hair an awful mess around her cheeks. Her eyes red and puffy. Her expression both miserable and hopeful at the same time._

God, looking at herself is weird.

She takes a step towards Other Kate, saying, "Uh, hi. Can you hear me?"

_No response from Other Kate._

Kate leans forward, moving to touch the other her. She expects her hand to collide with warm, soft flesh.

Instead, it goes right through.

Like Other Kate is a ghost.

No… not quite.

Like Other Kate is perfectly solid. Like she, Kate Beckett, the real one, is the ghost.

On a hunch, she charges over to the other side of the room, to where her calendar hangs, and checks it.

May 9th, 2012.

But it's… Thursday. It's Thursday. Thursday, September… 10th. September 10th… _**2015**_.

What the hell is going on?

She glances at Other Kate. Then back at the calendar. Then back at Other Kate.

She _remembers _this day.

The day after Castle left, three years ago, when she called Lanie over to her house to cry with her and maybe engage in some much-needed girl talk. And this is what happened. This conversation that _she just had. _

But when she tried to say something that she hadn't actually said during the real conversation, it was like Lanie couldn't hear her.

And when she tried to get up, to do something she hadn't done on that day… she left Other Kate behind. She left the Kate of May 9th, 2012 behind.

This is a memory. Oh, God, this is a _memory. _

She's trapped in her own memories.

Either this is her weirdest dream ever…

…or something really weird and probably really bad happened to her.

She can remember the day that it is in the time she's living in. Thursday, September 10th, 2015. She remembers getting up, getting dressed, heading down to work, not having time to get coffee. She remembers parking her car, starting to walk across the street…

…and nothing else.

Then what? What happened next?

Dammit, why can't she remember?

She is screwed. She is really and truly screwed.

-0-0-0-

On Thursday, September 10th, 2015, Kate Beckett lies in a hospital bed, completely unmoving.

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**Confused? I know I would be.**

**Here's the short version: as a result of the accident she was in, Kate is comatose, reliving her own memories of the time Castle was gone, most of the time without realizing that she's not actually the Kate Beckett she remembers. Still confused? Go watch Inception. After that, your confusion with this fic will seem like nothing.**

**Oh, yeah – I don't own Almost Lover by A Fine Frenzy. I just love it. Same goes for Castle and all of Andrew Marlowe's lovely characters.**


	24. Diminished

_In a painted past, in a looking glass, I see me looking back_

_-Drink Me, Anna Nalick_

-0-0-0-

_She sends them away to do the job that really should've been hers._

_They've found Cole Maddox, and the triumph she feels is beyond impossible. It is the most amazing feeling. She'd had a bit of it, a taste, a sample, when they'd gotten the security camera footage from the church, when she'd finally seen his face. It had been that feeling that drove her to find that footage, and it was the significant lack of that feeling that she'd experienced over the past thirteen years that told her that if they put his picture out, he would disappear and they'd never find him. She couldn't lose that lead. And that's what she told them. Esposito and Ryan. "I'm not going to lose this lead."_

_The man who shot her. He is the man who __**shot **__her. As if this investigation wasn't personal enough already, this man had to shoot her in the chest and stab her in the back. He tried to murder her twice, but somehow she survived._

_Clearly luck is on her side._

_Unfortunately, that may be the only thing going for her._

_She doesn't even have the support of her entire team. With Castle gone, it's like she's missing a limb. An entire part of herself has vanished, and she feels crippled._

_You never know what you have until it's gone. That's the saying, anyways. And just as she was thirteen years ago, she is abruptly struck by how utterly, irrevocably true it is. She never realized how much she needs Castle until he left her. She never understood how much a part of her he is. He is an extension of her being, as much a part of her life as she herself is. And with him gone, she is only half of who she was. She's… diminished._

_But her plucky sidekick/writer tagalong/partner/almost lover isn't the only one who doesn't have her back when it comes to this. There's Gates, too. If she were to know about the connection to Johanna Beckett's murder, the first thing she would do would be to take Kate off the case. That's what she's like. She's nothing like Montgomery. Montgomery, who let Kate off the hook when he found her going through the Beckett murder files she wasn't authorized to look at. Montgomery, who brought her to Homicide. Montgomery, who gave her a choice during the Jack Coonan case – to investigate or not to investigate – and who respected both of the decisions she made. Montgomery, who told her 'walk, don't run', and who gently helped her to do just that her own way. Montgomery, who kept his connection to her mother's murder quiet until the very end. Montgomery, who gave his life to protect her._

_No, Gates is no Montgomery._

_And she said it best herself, the day Kate met her. "I don't know what kind of shop Montgomery was running down here, but it'll be a cold day in hell before I let a cop investigate their own shooting." _

_It'll be a cold day in hell before I let a cop investigate their own shooting._

_A cold day in hell._

_No, Gates would never let her investigate this if she knew._

_And that's why she's kept it on the down-low thus far. That's why, if circumstances were different, she would take Esposito, maybe Ryan, too, and go get Cole Maddox alone, without backup, because that was the only way she would be able to go. _

_But circumstances aren't different. And as it is, she's rather preoccupied._

_She made a choice – her mother's murder over Castle. In her determination to bring one lost love to justice, she inadvertently lost yet another love. But Johanna Beckett is dead. Nothing Kate can do will bring her back. Castle… Castle is very much alive. And maybe, just maybe, if she plays her cards right… _

_She can't have her mother back. But maybe she can have him._

_So she's conducting two secret investigations at once. One, hunting down Cole Maddox under the pretense of finding Orlando's killer, when really she wants to find the Dragon. And two, hunting down Castle under no pretense at all, because no one even knows she's doing it._

_Well, no one except for Lanie._

_So when they find Cole Maddox, she wants to go and get him herself. But she also wants to stay and figure out where Castle is._

_Once again, she finds herself confronted with a choice – Castle or her mother?_

_But now she knows what the right choice is._

"_Do you two mind bringing him in?" she asks. "I've got some work I need to get done here."_

"_What work?" Esposito asks, puzzled. The subtext of his words rings loud and clear – 'What could possibly be more important to you than this?'_

"_Orlando Costas stuff," she replies, the lie sliding easily off her tongue. "So Gates doesn't get suspicious. I kind of want to check up on Marisol a little more."_

_Espo can tell she's lying. He's like Lanie in that way – he sees right through her. But while Lanie will pressure her until the truth comes out, Esposito understands why she often feels the need to lie. He knows that there are some things she needs to handle on her own, some things she needs to lie about to keep private. And, like in the case with Lee Travis, the sniper, he knows when she's crossed the line into territory where she can't be allowed to continue alone. He knows when he has to interfere._

_And he knows that now is not one of those times. Now is one of the times when, although he may know that when she says she's fine, she's far from it, he knows to let her be. Because this time, though she may not be fine now, if he lets her handle this alone, someday she will be._

"_We'll need backup," Ryan reasons. "This guy is a professional killer. We can't go in there alone."_

"_Ryan, you're a cop," she points out. "And Espo was Special Forces. I trust you guys."_

"_I don't," he replies. "Think of the way he disappeared at Montgomery's funeral. Think of how he snuck up on you the night he stabbed you. The two of us? We aren't close to a match for him."_

"_Speak for yourself, bro," Esposito muttered._

"_Javi, now is not the time to get cocky."_

"_Take Karpowski," Kate suggests. She trusts Karpowski – she doesn't think she'll tell Gates what they're up to._

"_One more cop does not backup make," Ryan says, and she winces, because it sounds awfully like something Castle would say._

"_Ryan," Esposito says, sounding like he's speaking to a small child who refuses to understand something. "Think about it. If we want to go in with backup, we'll have to tell Gates what's going on."_

"_I know," Ryan replies. "Bro, this just feels wrong. I hate lying to her."_

"_She'll take Beckett off the case!"_

"_Maybe she should be off the case!"_

_At that, they all freeze. They've been 'yelling' softly enough so as not to make a scene, not to attract attention, but this sudden inactivity is enough to turn a few heads._

"_Everyone's thinking it," Ryan murmurs after a few seconds. "Castle was so convinced of it, he left when you wouldn't listen to him." He pauses, painfully aware of the death glare Kate is shooting him, because in the weeks since Castle left, they've all very deliberately avoided any mention of him. This is the first time his name has been spoken in nineteen days. And it hurts._

_But even under Kate's angry stare, Ryan still manages to get out his next words._

"_Maybe you should've."_

_Doesn't she know it._

"_Kevin –" Esposito begins, sounding rather pissed off, but he stops talking at once when Kate interrupts him with a single murmured word._

"_Fine."_

_At that, both Esposito and Ryan turn away from each other to stare at her. They speak at the same time, Ryan saying "What?" and Esposito "Excuse me?"_

"_Fine," she repeats. "Go to Gates. Tell her everything. Let her take me off the damn case."_

"_Beckett," Esposito says, as though preparing to give a her a lecture, to tell her she isn't thinking straight, but he's wrong. She is. She's thinking straighter than she ever has in her entire life._

"_Don't 'Beckett' me," she tells him. "I know what I'm doing. Go. And then get Maddox for me."_

_Esposito looks, for lack of a better word, dumbfounded, but Ryan nods. "Alright. Will do. You should head home."_

"_I told you, I have work to do."_

"_You're off the case."_

"_Not yet," she says. She might as well just tell him that she isn't doing what she says she is – he knows anyways. They both know. So really, there isn't any point in telling them, is there?_

_Beckett logic. Never fails._

"_Okay, then," Ryan agrees, because he's now on the same page as Esposito – the everyone-knows-Beckett-is-up-to-something-and-everyone-can-tell-she-totally-isn't-fine-but-we're-not-going-to-say-anything-because-at-this-point-she's-still-perfectly-capable-of-getting-through-whatever-she's-going-through-on-her-own-and-if-we-try-to-baby-her-she'll-get-pissed-at-us-but-if-things-get-any-worse-there-will-be-an-intervention page. They seem to end up on that page quite a lot. "Then go home," he continues. "You may pretend otherwise, but we all know you're still not one hundred percent."_

"_I don't know what you're talking about," she says smoothly, and he laughs. "Alright. See you, Kate." And both men walk away._

_See you, Kate._

_Kate._

_He never calls her Kate. Never. She doesn't think he's ever called her Kate before in the time they've known each other. She was always Beckett. In every situation, Beckett. Beckett, Beckett, Beckett. Never Kate. If he were running to save her life, yelling for her to hang on until he gets there, she thinks he'd still be calling her Beckett. Because that's who they are. She sometimes calls Espo Javi, and she knows that the boys occasionally call each other Javier and Kevin, or Javi and Kev, but the two of them have always been Beckett and Ryan. Never Kevin and Kate._

But that's wrong. He calls her Kate all the time.

_No, he doesn't. This is the first time he's ever called her that._

Not true. All the time she's spent with him outside of work – walks in the park, dinners at his house, hours of being 'Auntie Kate' to little Ian Andrew Ryan – through all of that, she's been Kate, and he's been Kevin.

_None of that's happened. They don't hang out outside of work. She doesn't have dinner with him and Jenny on a regular basis. He has no son._

Yes, he – oh, **damn**.

The memory thing.

She remembers getting up on Thursday the 10th and heading for the precinct. That's the most recent thing she remembers.

But now that she thinks about it, she remembers nothing of the 9th. Or the 8th. Or the 7th, or the 6th, or the 5th. Or any day before that.

She remembers everything that happened before Castle left. She remembers the next two or three weeks – girl talks with Lanie, sessions with Dr. Burke, physical therapy, trying to find Maddox and Castle simultaneously.

But everything that happened between this day she's experiencing now and the morning of the 10th…

It's a blank. A black void of nothingness where three years should be. Punctuated by the occasional vague, fuzzy image of life without him – dinner with the Ryans, Esposito proposing to Lanie, holding one of Ian's hands while Kevin held the other so the tiny boy could lift his feet off the ground and swing between them. But they're just flashes, ideas, fragments of memories. They're seconds. But the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, the years… all of that is gone.

Three years of her life gone. Vanished.

She feels weak without them. Naked. She hates it.

Whatever happened on the 10th must've been bad for it to cause something like this. She almost doesn't want to know.

But, of course, she has to know. She's a homicide detective. The thirst for truth is a side effect – an occupational hazard.

_Other Kate shifts in her chair_, and Kate feels herself tugged along into the motion. She can move independent of Other Kate – she knows that from the memories she's already relived. But if she doesn't resist, if she's just a passive force, a second person living in the same body as Other Kate, she says what Other Kate says. She does what Other Kate does. But she has to be careful, because after a little while, she forgets that she isn't, in fact, Other Kate. She loses herself and becomes the Kate that existed during whatever time she's experiencing.

_Other Kate lifts her hands and places her fingers on the keyboard, pressing the spacebar to wake the monitor up. She pulls up a hidden tab_, and through her eyes, Kate sees all of the searches that Other Kate has already made in her efforts to find Richard Castle. All of the searches she remembers making – up until this point. Everything from here forward – until the 10th – is gone.

Well, then. She might as well sit back and watch her own life unfold.


	25. Atlas

_I saw your face in a crowded place, and I don't know what to do, 'cause I'll never be with you_

_-You're Beautiful, James Blunt _

-0-0-0-

"_I should've known. I should've guessed, it's so obvious, of course that's where he went, I should've known…"_

"_Quit beating yourself up over it," Lanie advises, taking a sip of red wine from one of her larger glasses. "And stop pacing. You're going to wear a hole in my living room floor."_

_Looking dejected, Kate flops down on the couch across from Lanie, grabs her wine glass from the coffee table, and downs almost a third of its contents before replacing it on the table. _

"_It just feels so pointless," she says, putting emphasis on the last word. "I spend hours in front of my computer, looking for him. I get taken off the Orlando Costas case, Gates suspends me for withholding evidence, and Cole Maddox disappears again. And all this time, he was right where I should've expected him to be. All of this could've been avoided if I'd just thought about it a little." She takes another substantial sip of wine and then presses the heels of her hands to her temples. "Ow. Brain freeze."_

"_You can't get a brain freeze drinking wine," Lanie tells her. "More likely, you're giving yourself a headache because you're totally overthinking all of this. The point is, you found him. The end result is the same." A pause, and then: "Also, not all of that could have been avoided."_

"_What do you mean?"_

"_Honey, you think Cole Maddox got away just because you weren't there? You think you and either Ryan or Espo could've taken him down on your own, with no backup, when Ryan and Espo plus twenty other guys couldn't?" Lanie shakes her head. "We need to talk about this ego of yours."_

"_That's not the point, Lanie," Kate replies. "The point is I was stupid, and now I've wasted valuable time and I have no job for the next month."_

"_That could be seen as a good thing."_

"_How's that?"_

"_Well, for one thing," Lanie begins, "you won't have to ask for a leave of absence so you can head to the Hamptons and make up with Writer Boy."_

"_Point taken." Kate pauses. "Wait, who said anything about actually going to the Hamptons?"_

"_Well, I assumed –"_

"_What if he doesn't want to see me? What if he's still just as mad? If he rejects me again?" All of the life seems to go out of her, leaving her a slumped, soulless husk, hopeless and helpless, sitting on her best friend's couch with a pounding head and a heavy heart. "I don't know if I can survive that, Lanie."_

"_Then what did you track him down for?"_

_Strangely, this insensitive, no-brainer comment makes her feel much more confident than she would've if Lanie had come over and whispered meaningless reassurances in her ear. That would've just made her feel more despondent. This remark makes her think, of course. I tracked him down because I want to see him. Because I need to see him, to talk to him, to explain. Because I need to make things right. And I can't do that if I sit here, too afraid of rejection to go and find him._

"_I'll help you pack," Lanie says, standing up and putting her almost empty wineglass down on the coffee table. "You're leaving tomorrow."_

"_Okay," Kate agrees after a second, getting up and following Lanie to the front door. Both women slip their feet into their shoes, Lanie opens the door, and once they're both through, she closes and locks it behind them._

_They take a taxi to Kate's apartment and spend the next half hour packing her a bag with enough clothes for three days. Lanie books her two nights in a hotel near the Hamptons, saying, "Hopefully, you won't need it," prompting an eye roll (and a tiny smile) from Kate. _

_Kate offers to let Lanie stay for dinner, but the ME shakes her head. "As tempting as Chinese takeout sounds," she says, "I have a date." Her lips curve up in a knowing half-smile, and Kate knows exactly what she's thinking about – something Lanie had mentioned in one of their recent girl talk sessions, once she felt she could fit a few words about her own life in between her friend's rants. Something that happened when Kate was stabbed – specifically, when Lanie called Esposito to tell him that Kate was going to be fine. To be exact, the way he had ended their phone call, the three-word farewell that had silenced Lanie for a full minute before she ended the call with a curt "See you, Javi."_

"_**Love you, chica."**_

"_Good for you," Kate says._

"_No," Lanie corrects, "good for you. I'm just getting back together with my man. You're tracking yours down. That takes determination."_

_The two say goodbye, embracing and wishing each other luck. But as Lanie leaves, she stops in the doorway, one foot in the hallway and the other still in the apartment, and looks back over her shoulder at Kate. "We are two strong women," she says, "working in a man's world and taking initiative to get what we want." A confident smile dances on her face. "There's nothing that can stop us."_

_-0-0-0-_

_She arrives in the Hamptons late on the next day. She could've gotten there early; she forced herself out of bed at seven, hoping to arrive by ten._

_But instead, she sat in her pajamas for hours on end. She didn't eat anything until eleven, didn't put on real clothes until two. Because she'd realized something._

_She had no plan._

_She couldn't just show up at his door. Could she? No, she couldn't. Why not? It wasn't right. He'd done it to her before. Not in a situation like this. Does it really matter? It mattered to her. Why? She didn't know._

_She went back and forth and back and forth for hours and hours on end, two voices in her mind battling it out. Eventually, she grabbed her bag and forced herself out the door and into her car and onto the road, vowing to figure something out on the way there._

_She didn't._

_So now it's nearly six PM and she has no plan of attack. She's sitting on the bed in her hotel room, her still-packed bag on the mattress next to her, with her hands in her lap and her mind reeling._

_Okay, Kate. Calm down. You're probably overthinking this. Stay simple._

_She could just show up at his door and demand to speak to him. She tracked him down – she knows his address._

_Let's call that Plan B._

_She could call him. Yeah. She could do that. Assuming he hadn't changed his number, that could work._

_He probably wouldn't answer. He'd probably see her face on the screen of his phone and hit ignore. He's probably that angry with her._

_It's a risk she'll have to take._

No, Kate, _a voice in the back of her mind whispers. _It won't work. He won't answer.

_He might._

You're setting yourself up to fail. More than that, you're setting yourself up to fall.

_She doesn't have much of a choice._

Listen to me, Kate. This is a bad plan. Please, just go to his house. Talk to him. Maybe things will turn out differently.

_Kate frowns; what is the voice talking about? It sounds like her, but… not her._

_It's quiet now, like it, too, is confused about what it's said. Maybe like it's said something it shouldn't, or maybe like it has no idea where the words came from._

_Okay, now she's losing it. She's psychoanalyzing a voice in her head. She has better things to be thinking about._

_So she ignores the voice. She actively ignores it. _And Kate slips blindly back into the persona of herself from three years before.

_She gets out her cell, opens her contacts, scrolls to the Cs and taps his name. And she presses the phone to her ear, anxiously tapping her foot against the ground as she holds her breath, waiting for him to pick up. _

_He doesn't._

_So she sits there, numbly holding the silent phone against her face, refusing to suck in a new breath until the burning of her lungs is too painful to ignore. The odd voice was right. It's just a damn call. Maybe his phone is dead. But she knows that's not the case. She knows he hung up on her without even bothering to see what she wanted. She knows he doesn't care enough to hear her out anymore._

_And, God dammit, it hurts._

_She set herself up to fall. And now she's quickly plummeting towards rock-bottom. And the stones she's dropping towards look awfully sharp and hard, and she knows the impact will break every bone in her body, pop her open like a burst water balloon and splatter her insides all over the place._

_She has to find some way to catch herself. Because if she doesn't, she's dead._

_Through all of these thoughts, four words shine through, so bright and strong and true she almost wants to laugh._

_**I need a drink.**_

_-0-0-0-_

_The closest bar is too crowded._

_The lighting is too dim. The music, played by a group of twenty-somethings up on a small stage, is too fast and too loud. The people are too happy._

_But she doesn't have the energy to find someplace else._

_So she somehow manages to push her way through the throng, somehow manages to reduce the blasting music to a dull roar in the back of her head, somehow manages to find an empty barstool and sits down. _

_In casual jeans, a dark blue shirt that buttons up the front, and a black leather jacket, she feels strangely out of place. She's so different from the scantily clad women who brush past her and dance too close to the grinning men. She's frozen, her expression painfully neutral, her clothes far too ordinary. She feels like there's a spotlight shining down on her. Like she's holding up a sign that reads '__**LOOK AT ME!**__' in flashing pink lights. Like she's a beacon of sanity (or maybe insanity), so bright (or so dark) she can be seen from space._

_She doesn't like the feeling._

_She orders a beer, pulls the money to pay for it from her jacket pocket and tosses it onto the counter. She'll probably order another. And another after that. She hates getting drunk, but fuzzy oblivion may be just what she needs right now._

_A laugh rings out across the bar, audible even over the booming music. Within seconds, she's standing, more alert than she's been in days, maybe weeks, frantically turning her head from side to side, searching for the source._

_Because she knows that laugh._

_Within seconds, her gaze lands on the one person she wants to see most. The one person she can't handle. The one person she needs to be close to and needs to be as far away from as possible, because somehow it is possible for both needs to exist simultaneously. Or maybe it isn't. Because the conflict, the raging war in her mind between closeness and isolation, between yes and no, feels like it's enough to tear her in two._

_Castle._

_He's standing with a small, pretty brunette, a girl with hair like Kate's own but whose haughty posture and facial expression emulate Gina. The sort of girl who would have been his type four years ago, with a little bit of his current type mixed in._

_It's a weird thought._

_In one hand, he holds a small square glass of gold liquor; the other hand, he waves wildly around as he tells some sort of story. She can't hear the words, but the brunette Gina-like girl seems to find it extremely amusing. _

_He's making her smile. He's making her laugh._

_It's wrong._

_Her lips form the name, but no sound comes out. She tries again, desperate to call out to him, desperate for him to see her, to acknowledge her, to love her, but still nothing happens. She's mute._

_Thankfully, it doesn't matter._

_Because he glances her way as he looks out over the rest of the bar. For a terrible, frightening second, his gaze passes over her, continuing on, until it snaps right back to her in a panicked double-take._

_Their eyes meet, blue on hazel, and lock in place. Neither can look away. Her face is desperate, but hopefully so; an emotion she can't define has etched itself on his. He mouths her name, her first name, Kate, and it sends a thrill through her. Kate. Not Beckett. Kate. _

"_Castle," she whispers, because she can make sound again now. But as she takes a step towards him, as she begins to push through the crowds because she needs to get to him, brunette Gina taps his arm. And he shakes his head quickly, as though to clear it, and turns back to her, continuing the story he was telling._

_Continuing as though he never saw her._

_For a moment, the weight of the sky was lifted off her shoulders, held aloft by her hope. But now, it comes crashing down on her again, three times as heavy. She's trapped between it and the earth between her feet, the burden slowly pushing her down into the ground. Like Atlas._

_She's a cop. She's not supposed to feel sorry for the bad guys. Not even the mythological ones._

_But she feels for Atlas._

_She turns, sprinting away from the bar and from him, shoving people rudely out of her way and not caring as they yelled objections after her. It doesn't matter anymore. She has to get out of there. She has to get away from him._

_Because she's not his. Not anymore._

_She's never going to get him back. Not ever._

_Maybe it's time for her to accept that._


	26. Can I Trust You

_Hold me up just a little bit longer, I'll be fine, I swear, I'm just gone beyond repair_

_-Jersey, Mayday Parade_

-0-0-0-

"Castle, go home."

"No."

"We'll call you when she wakes up. Go home"

"I don't want to."

"Castle –"

"I'm not going anywhere."

Thirteen hours. That's how long he's been sitting by her bed, staring helplessly at her pale, lifeless face. Thirteen hours she's been stable. Thirteen hours trapped in the impossibly deep sleep of a coma.

_A coma. _The thought is both unbearably painful and absolutely ludicrous. Comas were supposed to be the stuff of movies and books and hospital soap operas. They weren't supposed to actually happen. Especially not to people you knew. It just felt… absurd.

But here he is, sitting in a hospital room, watching her unmoving form and listening to the steady beeping of the heart rate monitor. Lanie and Esposito stand on the other side of the bed, their hands clasped together; when they'd joined him in her room, hours earlier, his eyes had flicked from their faces to the elegant ring on Lanie's finger – a thin silver band with a princess-cut diamond and two much smaller diamonds set in the metal of the ring on either side of the princess-cut. He'd remembered what Kate had said about how they were engaged, wanted to congratulate them but knew that it was neither the time nor the place. Jim Beckett is sitting silently beside them (he hasn't said a word to Castle since he arrived). Ryan had been with them until about twenty minutes ago, when he'd finally gotten Jenny on the phone – she'd been in meetings the entire day, and he hadn't been able to reach her, but as soon as he did he moved out into the lobby to wait for her.

"It's okay," Lanie insists – unlike her fiancé, she doesn't seem to be holding much of a grudge against Castle. "The doctors said she's stable. If anything happens, I promise I'll call you right away."

"Don't want to leave," Castle mutters. "Want to be here when she wakes up."

"Come on." This voice is new, young and sweet and pure, familiar and welcome. Her skin is cool as she wraps her thin, delicate fingers around his hand; as she gently pulls him up from his chair and towards the door, he blindly follows. He doesn't want to leave Kate's bedside. But this is a voice he listens to.

"Come on, Dad," the voice beckons as he stops at the door, looking back at her over his shoulder. "Come on," she repeats. "Let's get you home."

So he follows her out of the hospital room, and it's only once he's not in the same room as Kate that he wakes up and really takes in the thin, slender figure, the flowing orange hair, the weak smile on the twenty-one-year-old's face.

"Alexis," he says numbly. "When did you get here?"

"Just now," she replies as she leads him towards the lobby, "with Jenny. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Kate?"

"She…" He trails off, because the words are getting stuck in his throat and he doesn't want to say them, as though uttering them would somehow make them true. "She's stable," he says finally. "In a coma."

"Then you're not fine." Alexis sighs, shaking her head slowly. "You won't be until she is."

There it is. Put in simplest terms – by his daughter, no less. He won't be fine until she is.

They've reached the lobby, and he can see Ryan and Jenny standing facing each other. Ryan is speaking; Jenny looks close to tears. Alexis walks past them and bends down in front of a much smaller figure, an adorable toddler with honey-blond curls.

"Hey, Ian," she says sweetly, reaching for him.

"Lessis," he greets. "Daddy say Auntie Kate in trouble."

"That's right," Alexis agrees. "But she's okay now."

"Come say hi?"

"Not right now, sweetie. She's sleeping."

"Oh." The boy nods understandingly, but his expression is sad.

"C'mere," she beckons, holding her arms open; he walks into them, and she wraps them around him. Lifting him up and holding him tight so he rests against her hip, she stands and turns back towards Castle. "You want to meet my Daddy?"

"Daddy," he repeats, pointing towards Ryan.

"That's your Daddy, silly," Alexis tells him. "My Daddy's over here. Come on." Carrying the toddler with her, she walks back over to Castle. "Dad," she says, "this is Ian Andrew. He's –"

"Ryan and Jenny's son," Castle finishes. "Kate told me." He smiles weakly at the kid – who, he notices, has wide eyes the exact same shade of vibrant blue as his father's. "Hey, little man."

"Hi, Lessis Daddy," Ian replies, his face bright and excited. "You catch bad guys?"

Castle shrugs. "Some of the time," he says.

"Okay." Ian beams. "My Daddy catch bad guys. Like Superman!" He holds his arms up and out like he's pretending to be Superman, making a whooshing noise as he exhales which Castle assumes means, in his two-year-old mind, that he's flying. "Auntie Kate catch bad guys, too. She Supergirl."

Castle is abruptly torn between wanting to laugh, cry, and correct the toddler's grammar. Here's this kid, Ian – Ryan and Jenny's son, no less – being absolutely adorable with his badly formed sentences and hero-worship of his father and his 'Auntie' Kate. And meanwhile, down the hall, Kate herself is stuck halfway between life and death.

What is he doing here, anyway? Why did he let his daughter take him away from her? He should be back there. He should be with her. He needs to be with her. He needs to turn around and run back down that corridor and sit right down next to her bed again.

God, he's got tears in his eyes. He's going to cry. He's going to cry in front of his Alexis and her two-year-old babysitting charge. In front of his daughter and the son of a man he used to call a close friend.

They've noticed, too. Ian reaches for his face, tiny splayed fingers on a tiny hand. "You okay, Lessis Daddy?"

"He's fine, Ian," Alexis says, shifting the boy higher on her hip so he doesn't slip from her arms and fall. "He's just worried about Auntie Kate."

"Oh." Ian drops his hand, looking at Castle with wide blue eyes. "Don't worry, Lessis Daddy," he stresses. "Auntie Kate gonna be okay. She Supergirl."

Castle blinks, forcing the tears back and biting his cheek as he nods. "Yeah, little man," he agrees. "Yeah, she is."

"Here." Alexis squats and sets Ian down on the ground in front of Castle. "You stay with my daddy for a minute, okay? I'll be right back."

"Okay," Ian agrees, nodding; as Alexis stands and walks over to Ryan and Jenny, he turns and looks up at Castle, beaming up at him with the tip of his thumb held between his teeth.

"Kevin, Jenny," he hears Alexis call, and he looks up to see her approaching the couple. "If you guys want to stay here, I can take Ian home, stay with him until you get back."

"Really?" Jenny asks; when Alexis nods, she smiles gratefully. "I'll pay you extra."

"No," Alexis says, shaking her head. "It's fine."

"You've got the spare key?"

"Yeah."

Jenny nods quickly before enveloping the redheaded girl – woman now, really, though Castle has trouble thinking of his daughter as such – in a tight embrace. "Thank you," she says softly once she's pulled away, and Alexis nods before walking back over to Ian and Castle.

"Come on," she says to the toddler, extending her hand. "We're going home now, okay?"

"Why?"

"Because it's bedtime."

"Mommy and Daddy?"

"They're going to stay here with Auntie Kate," Alexis tells him; she wiggles her fingers, asking him to take her hand. "Come on."

"Up," Ian demands, extending his arms. Alexis sighs, but bends down and picks him up again, holding him on her hip like she had been just a minute ago. Keeping him there with one hand, she reaches towards her father with the other. "Come on. Let's get you home, too."

"I –" He stumbles over his words, trying to figure out the best way to vocalize what he's feeling. "I don't want to leave," he manages. "Don't want to leave her."

"Dad, please." Alexis's eyes are wide and pleading. "Come on."

He doesn't like it, but he consents. He takes his daughter's hand and lets her lead him out to her car. When she leaves him by the passenger side door and tells him to get in the car, he doesn't argue. He doesn't run back to the hospital. He gets in the car like she's told him to, because at the moment he's too utterly mindless to do anything else.

He sits in the car as she walks around to the backseat, opens the door, and helps Ian into the kid's car seat fastened in back there. And once he's securely buckled, she closes the door, comes back around to the driver's side, gets into the car, starts up the engine, and drives. She drives away from the hospital, away from that wretched place that once again houses the woman her father loves. She drives all the way back to his apartment building and walks with him and Ian into the lobby, up using the elevator, all the way to the door of his loft. She helps him unlock it because his shaking fingers fumble the key and he can't seem to fit it in the lock. She opens the door, looks up into his eyes, clear blue on clear blue, and asks, in all seriousness, "Can I leave you here alone?"

"Yeah," he replies, taking a step into his loft, but she stops him by grabbing his arm.

"Really, Dad," she says insistently. "Can I trust you not to go running right back to that place, or drink yourself half to death, or – or do something else incredibly stupid? Ian, stay here." He isn't sure how, but somehow as she spoke to him, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the yellow-haired toddler wandering a few steps away from them (he'd agreed to be led to Castle's apartment rather than carried). He has no idea how his daughter manages to beseech him not to do anything stupid while also paying attention to Ian. He himself is having enough trouble keeping his attention on one thing in this reality.

"Can I trust you," she asks, "to be here alone?"

He pauses for a few seconds before replying, "Yeah." She gives him a somewhat skeptical look, so he repeats, "Yeah. I'll be fine." Not 'I'm fine'. That would be a bold-faced lie. 'I'll be fine'. Because someday – someday far into the future, maybe, but someday nonetheless – that could be true.

"Okay," she relents after a minute; she steps towards him, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head below his chin. "Love you, Dad," she says before pulling back, turning away, hurrying back over to Ian Andrew, and leading him by the hand back towards the elevator.

And Castle walks inside his loft and closes the door behind him.

He doesn't go running back to that place.

He doesn't drink himself half to death.

He doesn't do anything incredibly stupid.

He just collapses on his couch and closes his eyes and tries to find sanctuary in the oblivion of sleep. Because he can't find the strength to make it all the way to his bedroom.


	27. Dedication

_Truth be told, I've tried my best, but somewhere along the way, I got caught up in all there was to offer, and the cost was so much more than I could bear_

_-Fallen, Sarah McLachlan_

-0-0-0-

_She thinks about calling Lanie. She thinks about calling for help, because even she can tell that she desperately needs it. She thinks about calling her best friend so she can break down in someone's arms._

_It's true – she wants to be held. Kate Beckett – tough as nails, serious as a heart attack, ice queen Kate Beckett – wants to be held. She knows that she's fragmenting, shattering into tiny pieces, and maybe someone's arms around her would help to hold her together. But it's not Lanie's arms that she needs._

_So she stops with her hand hovering over her cell phone, stops herself before she calls for help that won't help at all. She stops herself because it's well past midnight and she doesn't want to wake Lanie because there really isn't any point, seeing as nothing she can say will fix this problem. Nothing she can say will heal these wounds. _

_There's only one person who could look at this train wreck she's becoming, pick up all the pieces of her from the floor, and put them back together, good as new. And unfortunately, he's not available. He'll never be available again. Not for her._

_She does not have his arms, his heart, his crooked smile and sweet blue eyes. She does not have any of him, not anymore. She's alone. For the first time in four years, she is really and truly alone._

_She hadn't realized how much she'd begun to rely on him these past years. She never really stopped to think about what would happen when he was gone, if he were to leave. She guesses she always expected him to be there, loving her unrequitedly. She'd unwittingly begun to assume that no matter how badly she hurt him, he would always forgive her, would always take her back, because he always had in the past. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. No one person could withstand the amount of pain and angst and mixed signals and lies and secrets that she put Castle through. Eventually, anyone would snap under all of that pressure. But somehow, in between crazy theories and meaningful looks and words spoken in subtext, she'd managed to forget that. And when it happened, when he snapped, she was completely unprepared. And it was her own damn fault. If she hadn't been so stupid, if she hadn't kept her secrets and told her lies, if she hadn't hid behind her damn walls and shut him out and pushed him away, if she hadn't made the wrong choice again and again, then maybe… maybe things could've been different. But she was stupid, and she did keep her secrets and tell her lies, and she did hide behind her walls and shut him out and push him away, and she did make the wrong choice over and over despite everything he and everyone else were telling her. And because she did, he's gone. And there's nothing she can do about it._

_She's alone._

_God, she misses him. She misses his damn stubbornness and his conspiracy theories. She misses the way his gaze followed her even as she turned her back on him. She misses their unit cohesion, the intimate synergy that they fell into so easily, the way they finished each other's sentences and moved in sync and communicated in a language spoken only by their eyes. She misses the things she loved about him – the brightness in his eyes when he smiled, the way he could make even her laugh, the way he'd come in every morning with two cups of coffee clutched in his hands, the easy banter they'd quickly established, the softness of his hand around hers, his voice when he told her 'always'. She misses the things she hated about him – the way he never did what she told him to, his habit of throwing himself into danger, the stupid titles he'd think up for his books, the brokenhearted arguments they'd have when their secrets came out – battles of wits between two unbearably stubborn, equally hurt people. She even misses the things they never had – inside jokes that never happened, memories they never made. Like the moment when he finally brought her out to the Hamptons with him, the moment when he introduced her to his family as his girlfriend, the moment when he left her at home alone to scan the shelves of jewelry stores. The feeling of his body flush against her own, the sound of broken, erratic breaths as they struggled with the buttons of each other's clothes. The look on his face when she told him she loved him and he believed her._

_The things they never had. The things that, now, they never will._

_She misses him. So much. He's as much a part of her as she is, and without him, she feels like she's lost half of herself. She's a mere shadow of what she was, and she feels so… empty._

_It's too heavy. Too much of a burden. And, being the shade of herself that she is, she can't bear any weight at all. She's vulnerable, so vulnerable, and she's crumbling to dust under the strain of carrying the burden of him._

_So she falls. She drops to the ground in the middle of her living room, curls up into the fetal position, and rocks slowly back and forth as sobs wrack her feeble body. The choked, strangled sounds fill the air around her, smothering her, crushing down on her. She's spitting out the pain in her heart, and it's coming right back at her as more weight to add to her already unbearable burden. _

_She stays like that, curled up on the floor, her weight shifting from side to side to counteract and balance the shaking of her form. But eventually the loud, cracking sobs fade, gradually subsiding into short, strained gasps. Her eyes are red and puffy, her cheeks shining from the thousands of gallons of water she's dripped down them in the form of a million tiny tears. Her lips quiver, her entire body shivers uncontrollably, and there are raw red marks in the heels of her hands where her fingernails dug into her skin. _

_After forever and a day, she gets up, leaving the shallow indent she's created in her living room rug in favor of more friendly climes. The time glows, red and angry, on the clock on the stove in the kitchen – 2:47 in the morning. She's not tired. Her mind is reeling, spinning and flying from one painful thought to the next so quickly that she's sure she'll never be able to calm herself enough to sleep._

_So she staggers into her bathroom, peeling her clothes from her sweat-soaked skin in no particular order and letting them fall on the tile floor. When she reaches the bathtub, she wears nothing but her jeans and panties. By the time the tub is half full, she wears nothing at all. _

_Once she feels there's enough steaming water in the tub, once the air around her is thick and humid and all the metal surfaces – mirrors, doorknobs, taps - are completely misted over, she steps into the bath. She shudders as the hot water attacks her pores, stinging her skin. It's a pain that she welcomes, mostly because it's completely unrelated to the source of most of her pain these days. Bracing herself against the counter with on hand, she moves her other foot into the tub and sinks down into the water, letting the blissful burning sensation wash over all the bare skin of her naked body. She sinks until her figure is completely submerged and her hair swims around her head, forming a shimmering bronze cloud. Only her face floating on the surface and her hands clutching the sides of the tub remain untouched. And then she closes her eyes and takes a breath and sinks further, so that her entire head vanishes beneath the wavering reflective film on the top of the water. She sinks until the back of her head hits the bottom, and then she opens her eyes, surveying the world through the distorted screen created by the surface. She feels isolated, protected from that painful world by the water that surrounds her, and with actual weight rather than just emotional weight pressing down on her, she actually feels more solid and substantial than she has since she saw him in that bar. _

_She opens her mouth, letting the breath of air she took escape from her lungs. It floats upwards, a shaking, unsteady disc of a bubble, and bursts when it reaches the surface, sending ripples running across the tub. Still, she stays down until the aching of her lungs becomes too much to bear and she breaks the once-again-serene surface, sending out another wave of ripples._

_Her hands are the only part of herself that she left above the water; they are the only part of her that is still dry. And they seem to have a mind of their own as they instinctively reach for the counter beside the tub and feel around until they land on a thick, hard rectangle. Her fingers close around it, brushing against the sleekness of the cover and the roughness of the paper pages, and pull it towards her into sight. And as she takes it in, she can feel fresh tears springing into the corners of her eyes._

_Frozen Heat. It's Frozen Heat. In the time he's been gone, this book, this most recent installment in the Nikki Heat series, has become the one she reads the most. Nearly every night she buries herself in its pages, and it has taken up permanent residence on both her bedside table and the counter beside her bathtub. She has already gotten through it at least five times, and the pages are worn from where she's turned them, folded them, accidentally marked them with water spots from tears that she didn't wipe away before they dripped off her face onto the book. That wretched, beautiful book. She loves it and hates it, and she cannot bear to be parted with it._

_She opens the book, and her shaking fingers nearly drop it. She manages to catch it before it hits the water, but loses her page in the process. Not that it matters that much. She'll just start from the beginning again. She doesn't mind._

_So she opens it to the first page, to the dedication. The damn dedication. Because even though he left, even though he deserted her, he left her one final message, made one final thing clear: these are still her books. She is still Nikki Heat. Most importantly, she is still on his mind._

_Still, every time she reads the dedication, a thousand conflicting feelings spring to the front of her mind. Pain, primarily. A little bit of anger – yes, that's there. And a lot of love, because she knows he doesn't mean it cynically or sarcastically, doesn't mean it in the usual sense of the phrase. He means it literally. He truly does._

_So it's with shaking fingers that she holds his novel, and with wet eyes that she reads the dedication for the ten thousandth time._

_**To the extraordinary KB – I hope you're happy.**_


	28. Make It Uncomplicated

_If your heart is nowhere in it, I don't want it for a minute_

_-Love Song, Sarah Bareilles _

-0-0-0-

He wakes up on the couch.

For a moment, he's confused. He only falls asleep on the couch when he's dead drunk, but he doesn't feel the least bit hungover. On the other hand, there's a growing feeling of dread and misery in the pit of his stomach which he can't explain, which probably means that something's very wrong, and the times when something's very wrong are normally the times when he gets very drunk. Considering how awful he feels, it would probably be something wrong with Alexis or Kate, which would add to…

_Oh._

Everything, all the events of the previous day, come rushing back to him in a single instant and jerk his half-asleep mind into complete alertness. The car… pushing her out of the way… their talk… dinner plans… a broken bus filled with golden and red flames that danced wickedly from side to side, laughing at his despair… an ambulance, a hospital… _Kate…_

God, how could he have forgotten that, even for a moment?

He closes his eyes, wishing he could delve back into the blissful oblivion of sleep, but the sudden wakefulness brought on by the realization of what had happened yesterday sends his mind into turmoil. His thoughts run in chaotic, frantic circles, and he can't seem to slow his racing heartbeat.

Then he realizes what woke him up.

His phone is ringing. His cell phone. On the coffee table. For a brief, beautiful moment, he lets himself hope that it's Kate, that she's fine, that yesterday – or maybe even the past three years – were nothing but a strange, horrible dream, and she's calling to tell him about an early morning body drop. And he'll arrive at the scene looking nervous because he's terrified that it's not real, that it's just a wonderful fantasy that his traumatized mind is cooking up to give him a few minutes of happiness. And she'll tip her head to the side and ask if something's wrong. And he'll tell her no, everything's fine. And then maybe he'll kiss her, just because he can.

He knows it's not true. He knows it won't happen. But he lets himself hope simply because it's such a glorious feeling, pure, instantaneous relief. But it's just a momentary fix, and the false hope is gone a second after it came.

He reaches out towards the coffee table, groping around until his clumsy fingers land on his cell phone. Without bothering to look at it, he accepts the call, holds it up to his ear, and answers with a bleary, "Castle."

"_Oh. Hi." _It's distorted by the phone, but there is no mistaking the elegant, lilting sweetness of Brianna's voice. _"I'm sorry. Did I wake you up?"_

"No," he lies, but he doubts she's convinced.

"_Sorry," _she repeats. _"I should've texted. I figured you'd be up by now."_

He glances down at his watch – 10:49. Really? It's that late? "I should be up by now," he replies. "So don't worry about it. What's up?"

"_Just wondering if we're still on for lunch today."_

Lunch?

Oh. Right. Friday. Brianna. Lunch.

Shit.

"_Rick?" _It's not until her voice comes again that he realizes he's gone almost a minute without answering. _"Something wrong?"_

"Meet me in Central Park in twenty minutes," he says. "I need to talk to you."

-0-0-0-

She's waiting for him when he gets there. Standing just off the path near an empty bench, her arms crossed in front of her chest and all her weight on one foot. She's facing away from him, and a part of him wants to leave before she sees him, leave so he doesn't have to deal with this. But he can't just walk away. This is something he has to do.

"Bri. Hey."

She turns, dropping her arms to her sides, and it's like a slap in the face. She's lovely, she really is. In front of the backdrop of trees and greenery that Central Park provides, in skinny jeans and a white tank top with a yin-yang symbol on it and a green denim jacket and worn sneakers, with the wind swirling her wheat-blonde hair around her face. She's lovely here, even more so than she is when she dresses up for when they go out to dinner. She's beautiful without trying. And she's smart and kind and funny and open and charismatic.

This is what he's giving up.

"Hi," she greets brightly as he walks across the path and joins her on the grass. "You said you needed to talk to me?"

"You and me," he says, pointing between the two of them – from her to him and back to her again – to emphasize his point. "What are –"

"We're friends," she interrupts, answering his question before it's fully formed. "Good friends."

"Good friends," he repeats as she walks back towards him. "Right. Except –"

And she kisses him.

It's just like her kisses always are – sweet and tentative and cautious, infused with a subtle sort of beauty. Soft. The kind of kiss he can imagine receiving from a beautiful wife as she leaves the house for work in the morning. An everyday kiss, insignificant in the grand scheme of things. There is no heat, no passion, no necessity. Just a simple, ordinary expression of love. Just the sweet beauty of two people who care for one another, and nothing more.

Two people who care for one another, though perhaps not in that way.

This has a little bit more desperation than he's used to, though. Like she knows what's about to happen and she wants to do this one last time.

"Except that's happened," he says once she's pulled back.

"Yeah," she agrees, a sound that is half word and half cynical laugh. "That's happened."

"Brianna, I…" He trails off. Because he's not sure how to say this.

Be honest. That's always been the policy for him and Brianna. Be honest.

"I'm not sure how to say this," he tells her. "I really don't know… I don't want you to think –"

"Rick, stop," she says, and he does. "I know where this is going," she begins. "I think I've always known."

"It's not that I don't like you," he says hurriedly, as though determined to get the words out before she cuts him off again. "Because I do."

"Just not like that," she finishes. "Look, Rick… I understand. This isn't what you were looking for." She sucks in a breath and continues. "I've kissed you. A few times now. But… you never kissed back. Through this entire thing, I've been the one who's been pushing us to take the next step, and the next one, and the next one. But you… you never wanted to go any further than 'good friends'."

She's perceptive, too. He forgot to include that when he was making a list of adjectives to describe her. Well, he's adding it now. She's extremely perceptive.

She's also right. It's always been her who's been taking step after step after step, dragging him along by the hand, when he never wanted to put one foot in front of the other in the first place.

"I don't want you to think that I've been leading you on," he says.

"I don't," she replies. "Think that. I don't. You were dropping all sorts of hints that this wasn't what you wanted. I just refused to see them."

"I do care about you."

"But it isn't enough." When he ducks his head, looking away, she presses, "Is it?"

"No," he admits.

She nods. Understanding. Too understanding.

She's that, too. Understanding.

"There's someone else," she murmurs.

"What? Brianna –"

"Not like that," she says quickly. "You're… you're not the cheating type. But there is someone else. Someone who you care about much more than you care about me."

His silence is as good as an affirmation. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her tip her head to the side, her lips parting as the rest of the puzzle pieces fall into place in her mind and the picture emerges.

"You're in love with her."

It's barely a whisper, but it's loud enough. And all he can do is nod.

"But she doesn't love you?"

"No, she –" How to put this? "She says… But she… She doesn't…" He sighs – it's hopeless. "It's complicated," he finishes lamely.

She nods, and for a minute, they're both silent. Then, with renewed strength in her voice, she tells him, "Make it uncomplicated."

"What?"

"You heard me, Rick. Figure it out. Make it uncomplicated." A sigh. "It's the only way you're going to be happy."

"But you –"

"I'm not going to pretend I don't have feelings for you," she says sadly. "But I can't be in a relationship with someone who doesn't want this as much as I do. It's not fair to them. It's not fair to you," she amends.

"This isn't fair to you."

"I'll be fine," she assures him, and for a second, he believes her. "I'll move on. I'm good at that. I'll find someone else. I'll figure something out. I'm pretty smart, you know." A strangled laugh.

"I know you are," he whispers, brushing a lock of yellow hair out of her face; she takes his hand and pushes it away.

"No," she says strongly. "Don't do this to yourself, Rick. Don't tear yourself apart over something you can't control."

"But I'm good at that."

Again, one note of choked laughter. "I'm sure you are," she agrees. "But still. You can't always be the good guy, you know. You can't make everyone happy. Sometimes, sacrifices need to be made. And if trying to make someone else happy means you aren't happy yourself…" She squeezes her eyes shut, and is silent for a few seconds before she opens her eyes again and continues. "Then you shouldn't do it. The purpose of life is to be happy." She smiles to herself, and quotes, "My mother always told me that the point of life is to be happy. In school, I was given an assignment to say what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I wrote 'happy'. The teachers told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life."

He can't suppress a slight chuckle. "Who said that?"

"Me," she says. "And… John Lennon."

"Of course."

"Look, the point is…" A deep breath. "Do what makes you happy. With the people who make you happy. And this other woman… I think she makes you happy."

"Well… among other things." Kate does make him happy, though. She annoys him; she frustrates him; she challenges him; she exhilarates him; and oftentimes she pisses him off. But most of all, she makes him happy.

"Then go," Brianna whispers. "Go to her. Figure things out. Make it uncomplicated. Be happy."

"But you –" he begins again.

"No," she says again. "Don't do this to yourself. Don't do this to me."

"To you," he repeats under his breath.

"Yes," she agrees.

"I'm sorry. I – I didn't realize –"

"You have no idea, do you?" She shakes her head slowly, a sad smile on her face. "The effect you can have."

He's silent.

"This other woman," she continues. "She'd be a fool not to care about you when you're so obviously in love with her."

"You think that?"

"I do," she says. "And I think you have a chance. So take it. Grab it. Don't let it… Don't let her slip away."

"Alright," he agrees after a second. Then: "So, you and I…?"

"We're friends," she says, just as she did at the beginning of their conversation.

"Good friends?"

"The best."

"Alright," he repeats softly. She's rubbed off on him, she has – the number of times that word has escaped his lips has increased exponentially since he met her.

"Come here," she says, closing the distance between them and wrapping her arms around him. As he returns the hug, he's struck by how much smaller she is than him. She can't be much shorter than Kate would be without high heels, but in sneakers, he can easily rest his chin on the top of her head.

"Rick?" she murmurs after a minute.

"Yeah?"

"Do one thing for me."

"Sure."

And she stands on her tiptoes, tipping her face upward so she can whisper directly into his ear. And softly, so softly, almost too softly for him to hear, she says, "Marry that girl one day."

They stand there for a while, in each other's arms, feeling the warmth of each other's bodies and realizing that Brianna's shirt is strangely prophetic – they are yin and yin, or perhaps yang and yang, and they could never work because they are too similar – before he responds.

"Alright."

-0-0-0-

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**Hey, all - sorry this update is so late! Things have been hectic. No, sorry, that's a lie. The truth is my friend K (she's SkimElektraLatte on here - check her out, her stuff is really amazing) got me hooked on Doctor Who and I've been burying myself in the world of the Doctor and writing lots of angsty Ten/Rose fanfiction that probably won't be posted until I finish up with either Damaged Goods or Dry Land, if not both. Anyways, you've got your new chapter now. Please don't kill me.**


End file.
